I don’t need thanks, but I did leave you a modest contribution. It would be a terrible shame if you had to leave the Internet. Be very candid with us and tell us when it becomes a real necessity to assist you. I am retired and have little money, but I will help. Your work is brilliant…and we need it!
It is truly a crying shame that this stuff is not published in a mainstream paper. What can its devotees do to see that it is?
The religious amongst us will object and cry mockery or blasphemy. Who cares? If they have a good point to make, then it ought to be strong enough to survive a little, gentle piss taking.
Okay, this one made me laugh out loud. Again. I’m leaving a pittance. Wish I was in a position to leave what you deserve, given the years of enjoyment I’ve had from this strip and the comments threads.
machigai, Nassar can’t be here? What? Do you know something about Nassar that I don’t know? I know he’s been missing lately, but that doesn’t mean he “can’t be here”. Does it?
The Christian archbishop has said
indifference is what priests should dread.
The hostile? They care, might
convert if you coax right.
Indifference means all hope is dead.
It took me a surprisingly long time to come up with this “limerick”! (I’m using quotation marks because I know that the meter and rhyme don’t meet the specs. for a limerick.) The ‘toon reminded me of one of those “can this marriage be saved?” articles that explained that, if two people who were in love now hate each other, there’s hope for them to love each other again, but if one’s indifferent, that’s the end of the relationship.
Nassar, we miss you! I hope you’ll feel better and better over the coming months, and that you’ll remember to visit the Cock & Bull once you’re back in action.
I see our new Christian commentor has revealed him(?)self to be an ex-long-term atheist. Hmm, why do I always find it hard to believe that whenever I hear it? Especially when the one making the claim asks daft questions such as why us atheists are angry with God.
David Amies on May 7, 2014 at 5:32 pm was seen to remark:
“It is truly a crying shame that this stuff is not published in a mainstream paper. What can its devotees do to see that it is?”
That could be remedied … theoretically …
Buying a page in a national newspaper is fairy cheap, at least relative to some other stuff one could waste money on like a new car, a child’s education or a house . One could, if Author was lax and complacent about copyright for a while, copy four issues per page in most tabloids, more for the broader papers. [Advertisement sizes available can be found from the links on this page.]
I picked this particular publication because I could remember how to spell it at weird o’clock in the morning, it’s often considered to have a large readership and it’s a publication many will have heard of. I neither recommend it nor disapprove of it. Indeed, I don’t read newspapers. I haven’t since about 1981.
Other publications are available. Some are newspapers.
Were we to club together to put a few issues of J+M out there, it may be a helpful suggestion to do it to more than one publication.
One could always try a Kickstarter campaign to fund the project. It is always possible that should the “adverts” be seen as popular the publisher might even pay for them, and pay for new ones, directly to the source.
Of course, Author may not like the idea.
Copyright is a tricky beasty.
There once was a Nassar so sick,
That he couldn’t do his party trick
He had some sort of runs
Preventing his puns
So we wish him to get well real quick.
Truthfully, I’ve no idea what type of afflication your dear friend has, but “runs” rhymed and “affliction” is too long to scan well and “poetic licence” is often taken to extremes in limericks. Just for the sake of future “poets”, here is a rather long introduction to the art and this book could be a starting point for anyone wishing to try their hand at humour.
Get well soon, Nassar.
I just got attacked (elsewhere) for pointing out that calling Indian numbering system “Arabic numerals” is an example of the Muslim habit of claiming the real world’s knowledge and inventions as Islamic……..
I know how it worked for me, AoS. I was once in that state, not so much that I didn’t have any kind of god belief, more that I was angry at the church for the lies they fed me. And mad at myself for believing that the judgmental god I learned about could literally exist. I was atheistic toward that particular god, but I was still searching for something transcendent that could fix me. I was ripe for a cult, and ended up in evangelical Christianity. So, a cult, but at least no koolaid.
I don’t want to get into a “no true Scotsman” argument here; I was an atheist, but my philosophy was weak and susceptible to emotional appeals. I wasn’t familiar with most of the good arguments against religious doctrine. I got suckered in.
I have just donated $100. I get more laughs from this cartoon than I get from anyone and anywhere else. I look forward to every Wednesday night (Australian time)
Himagain, you’re obviously getting into conversations with some really ignorant people. Do they also object to calling it “algebra”?
But your name rings a bell…and has a troll connection. Could it be you’re full of shite?
There’s no shortage of cats to skin, Macha, but there is way too much high five-ing going on in the lower extremities of these pages. Your last comment on the previous page, AoS, is an example of what I mean. Never mind getting into heaven, you guys need me around just to bring you all back down to earth;) http://youtu.be/NtNSljYgDe8
Ephphatha is convinced she’s right
With arguments ever so tight
She wants us for her “god”
And is a miserable sod
When we tell her she’s so full of … it.
Regarding Himagain on May 8, 2014 at 4:26 am, above:
Pal, *WE* call them “Arabic numerals” because that’s where the western lot nicked them from. It really doesn’t matter where they started, nor who gets the credit for inventing them, they’ve been “Arabic” in English for centuries and that’s hardly likely to change.
It might sound odd to suggest that India is primarily responsible for the invention of Arabic numerals but it’s no odder than many, many aspects of English.
Or are you one of those folk who think Dundee cake should be renamed? And that “pork pies” should be called something else unless they are made in Nunavut?
“-ish” is a suffix meaning: approximately, almost, quasi-, nearly or like. So “English” is nearly something like an approximation of a language used in England.
Yes, that sounds about right. Don’t expect its choices to make sense.
@ShallowEnder
I am guessing you meant ‘…ite’ – or is this an attempt to outdo NbH’s (disson-/conson-/asson-)-anced limericks. And is fetish a quasi-fete, or is it just like a fete? ๐
(Note to aforementioned C&B regular – get well soon, NbH.)
Regarding things Arabic, I seem to remember something about star names or constellations being given Arabic names. My understanding is that there were great Persian (?) scientists before their religion institutionalized ignorance.
“Debating creationists on the topic of evolution is rather like trying to play chess with a pigeon; it knocks the pieces over, craps on the board, and flies back to its flock to claim victory.โ
? Scott D. Weitzenhoffe
… or pretty much any other topic.
Do you agree Ephphatha ?
Where is you flock and why do you feel the need to shit all over this island of sanity and why don’t you fly right back to them since your cloaca appears to be empty?
ajbdude: “The comics donโt show up in Firefox anymore.”
I had the same problem, but fixed it by using NoScript to forbid J&M from using Javascript. Now, of course, I have to permit it again in order to post, and the comic isn’t showing.
The wonders of technology!
To JohnM: You must have heard the phrase “he’s full of it”? I thought that was funnier than just hammering home the point with the extra “e”. Assonance is often used in limericks as humorous counterpoint. Or something.
Darwin Harmless : there were good Astrographers in Persia and suchlike places but that’s quite irrelevant, really. The English, and Europeans in general, inherited lots of star names from Arabic language star maps. We inherited some from the Greek and Roman maps, too.
It’s a pity we didn’t absorb some Chinese names, those are often very beautiful, but they were too distant for us to know well.
It used to be a very large world.
@ shallowender
I originally thought your ellipsis was a place marker for ‘sh’. Tant pis pour moi.
One of my favourite ‘assonnant’ limericks follows:
There was a young man from Dundee
Unfortunately stung by a wasp.
When they said does it hurt
He replied,”Quite a bit.
Thank goodness it wasn’t a hornet”
May 8, 2014 at 8:33 pm
…..
My understanding is that there were great Persian (?) scientists before their religion institutionalized ignorance
Well, the great library at Alexandria in Egypt was the centre of scientific knowledge from around the third century BCE. It was there that Eratosthenes became the first person to calculate the circumference of the Earth, reckoning it to be 25,000 miles, which is pretty damn close and not a bad achievement considering he only used sticks, a man to pace out the distance between Alexandria and Syene, and good old (or pretty new for the time) mathematics.
Alexandria is said to have been a pretty cosmopolitan place and attracted scholars from Africa, India, Persia, Greece, etc.; astronomy, physics, biology, and maths were among the many subjects studied there, and the library is thought to have contained as many as half a million books, each one a hand-written papyrus scroll. All but a handful were deliberately destroyed around 415CE by Christians who understood that knowledge was dangerous – to their religion, but up until that point there were indeed great Persian scientists.
With the steady spread of Christianity followed hard by those convinced by the epileptic episodes of Mo, it was to be another 1200 years before religion relented enough to allow science to raise its head over the parapet again – and even now some are still trying to prevent it.
This is one of the reasons I get angry with religion, though never with their fantasy gods. Imagine where we might be now had religion not ruined everything.
Ephphatha, I found the tone of that Valdy song annoying. My feeling is, if you want to praise your favorite genre in song, do so. You don’t need to whine about the riffraff who supposedly only like rock and roll. It comes off sounding petulant. I like almost any kind of music when it’s good, including gospel. I don’t have to buy the whole storyline to appreciate the music.
I’m imagining no religion, AoS. Kind of like Paradise.
Totally OT but this is hilarious and a lot of fun. Try the new age bullshit generator and see what kinds of deeply meaningful phrases it comes up for you. It just generated this for me:
“This life is nothing short of a condensing vector of unified inseparability.”
Darwin – that link is amazing, the whole thing is so perfectly executed. It reads at first like all the sentences should make sense if you think about the definitions of the words, then you realise ‘no, it is all in fact bullshit’. Just like actual new-age phrases. In fact if you’d linked me to one of the articles it generates without clarifying what it was first, I’d have believed it to be real.
“You may be ruled by materialism without realizing it. Do not let it exterminate the knowledge of your story. Without grace, one cannot heal. Selfishness is born in the gap where insight has been excluded.”
Nassar is never afraid to offend
He’s been known to drive us all round the bend
We miss our resident poet
And would like him to know it
And hope that he’s soon on the mend.
The archbishop was reported to say
Indifference is what we fear today
Hostility it would seem
Is the crazy christian dream
And without it they are going to pay.
Ephphatha says:
May 8, 2014 at 6:04 pm
…….
Thereโs no shortage of cats to skin, Macha, but there is way too much high five-ing going on in the lower extremities of these pages. Your last comment on the previous page, AoS, is an example of what I mean. Never mind getting into heaven, you guys need me around just to bring you all back down to earth;)
We need you to bring us back down to Earth? Fucking typical egotistical, geocentric, Christian thinking. The Earth is not the be all and end all of human ambition. It may be enough for those who don’t really care about facts, but even immature children such as I like to set our sights to the Cosmos – you know, the Cosmos that is infinitely larger, infinitely more complex, and billions of years older than your Big Book of Guesses For People Who Don’t Want to Think For Themselves Bible would have you believe.
Anyway, old fruit, what’s so wrong with showing a little appreciation for a well-turned phrase?
Now, while I’m at it, I don’t believe your claim that you were an atheist for many years, not when you display such a basic lack of understanding of the word that you can ask such a ridiculous question as why we’re angry with god.
In fact, the more I think about it, the more you sound to me like those liars for Jesus who pretend that they used to be gay until they were cured by that symbol of wilful ignorance God.
Acolyte, you must teach me how to do those strike throughs. I like them. Wonderfully sarcastic.
And please check out the link I posted. I’m sure you will appreciate it.
Did Ephphatha actually suggest that we’re angry at god? I must have missed that. Dead give away, that idea. These Christians simply can’t imagine that somebody would not believe in their sky fairy, so we must be just pretending to not believe in him because we’re angry at him. Duh.
I’m angry at Santa Claus. I wanted a pony and he didn’t give me one. Sure. And I’m angry at the Tooth Fairy because he/she/it stopped giving me money once I was old enough to know it was coming out of the family budget. But god? No, not angry at him. Not at all. Don’t believe he exists.
By the way, those liars for Jesus aren’t pretending that they were gay and then cured by Jesus. They actually ARE gay and are pretending they were cured by Jesus. Heavy denial. Act straight and don’t let your wrist go limp. Praise the lord, I’m cured. I can join the guys in the hot tub now.
How many of them have been caught with a rent boy by now? I’ve lost count.
While the notion of being an ex-athiest is a weird one – given it’s implicit regression fro the natural to the supernatural or from reason to irrational – I can actually believe Ephphatha is such simply because of his vociferousness. Who amongst us does not know an ex-smoker who is far more vocally anti-smoking than any never-smoker?
WW:
He’s an ex-atheist who charges and convicts people of fundamentalist atheism.
I can’t help feeling he never quite got to grips with concepts involved.
While it is true there is no zealot like a convert, I believe Ephphatha thinks himself an ex-atheist because the claim is of a piece with the puerlity, irrelevancy and sheer tedium of the rest of his posts.
Darwin Harmless says:
May 14, 2014 at 3:02 am
……………..
Did Ephphatha actually suggest that weโre angry at god?
Darwin, it was a couple of comics back where he (I presume) muttered something about us fundamentalist atheists looking for a chance to vent our rage at God.
Walter, I have no problem with the idea of an ex-atheist, I simply don’t believe that one would ever make such a fundamentally(!) stupid statement as the one I mentioned above, so either our new friend is simply lying in the hope that his conversion would impress around these parts, what with him having been one of us, or he’s mistaking his disillusion with the god his original sect worshipped, and what he calls atheism was no more than the period between his rejection of the ‘wrong’ god and the finding of one that complied more with his expectations of what a god ought to be.
The ‘strike’ thing is done the same way as italics, you just type the word strike between the left- and right-facing arrows at the start of the bit you want to strike out, and at the end you do the same, but add a forward slash (the one that shares the question mark key) between the left arrow and strike.
Jesus & Mo (the characters) are absurd, blinkered, and oddly very sweet. J&M (the cartoon) is brilliant: sharp, delicious, irresistible. Salman Rushdie
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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
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Wittily captures much of the absurdity of religious apologetics. Mano Singham
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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
December 7, 2022
It would be ironic if there weren’t any comments to this great post. Alas, I’ll break the spell.
Absolutely brilliant; one of your best ever Author ๐
The subtlety is hilarious!
Great! I’m going to quote the bartender every chance I get.
@Massa I’m afraid you’ve blown it ๐
Indifferent to indifference?
Silence is golden
No comment.
Author – truly brilliant. This would be a good one to re-introduce the blinking eyes.
Everyone donate. Two fifty won’t kill you!
I really don’t care.
I’m sorry Nassar can’t be here to limerick this one.
I don’t need thanks, but I did leave you a modest contribution. It would be a terrible shame if you had to leave the Internet. Be very candid with us and tell us when it becomes a real necessity to assist you. I am retired and have little money, but I will help. Your work is brilliant…and we need it!
It is truly a crying shame that this stuff is not published in a mainstream paper. What can its devotees do to see that it is?
The religious amongst us will object and cry mockery or blasphemy. Who cares? If they have a good point to make, then it ought to be strong enough to survive a little, gentle piss taking.
Okay, this one made me laugh out loud. Again. I’m leaving a pittance. Wish I was in a position to leave what you deserve, given the years of enjoyment I’ve had from this strip and the comments threads.
What MarkyWarky said.
“.”
****crickets****crickets****
machigai, Nassar can’t be here? What? Do you know something about Nassar that I don’t know? I know he’s been missing lately, but that doesn’t mean he “can’t be here”. Does it?
Less is more. An invaluable lesso. . .
I have sent a small donation – friends, we must not lose J&M for the want of a few dollars….that would be a tragedy – please try to do the same.
Brilliant as always, Author.
@Darwin – Nassar is not well. He hopes to be back in action in a couple of months. (See eggs2 comment thread)
Nothing to see here move along move along.
In an attempt to fill in for Nassar:
The Christian archbishop has said
indifference is what priests should dread.
The hostile? They care, might
convert if you coax right.
Indifference means all hope is dead.
It took me a surprisingly long time to come up with this “limerick”! (I’m using quotation marks because I know that the meter and rhyme don’t meet the specs. for a limerick.) The ‘toon reminded me of one of those “can this marriage be saved?” articles that explained that, if two people who were in love now hate each other, there’s hope for them to love each other again, but if one’s indifferent, that’s the end of the relationship.
Nassar, we miss you! I hope you’ll feel better and better over the coming months, and that you’ll remember to visit the Cock & Bull once you’re back in action.
Thank you, Author. Don’t know how I missed that.
Nassar we miss you
Whoda thunk it
With the abuse you so often endure
I’d toast to your health but I drunk it
Still I hope you get well soon for sure.
The Christian faith thrives on hostility, it gives them the chance to play the martyr card. I mean, the clue’s in the name, innit?
A lovely tribute to the Laureate, Darwin.
I see our new Christian commentor has revealed him(?)self to be an ex-long-term atheist. Hmm, why do I always find it hard to believe that whenever I hear it? Especially when the one making the claim asks daft questions such as why us atheists are angry with God.
The comics don’t show up in Firefox anymore. Have to use a different browser to read them.
David Amies on May 7, 2014 at 5:32 pm was seen to remark:
“It is truly a crying shame that this stuff is not published in a mainstream paper. What can its devotees do to see that it is?”
That could be remedied … theoretically …
Buying a page in a national newspaper is fairy cheap, at least relative to some other stuff one could waste money on like a new car, a child’s education or a house . One could, if Author was lax and complacent about copyright for a while, copy four issues per page in most tabloids, more for the broader papers. [Advertisement sizes available can be found from the links on this page.]
I picked this particular publication because I could remember how to spell it at weird o’clock in the morning, it’s often considered to have a large readership and it’s a publication many will have heard of. I neither recommend it nor disapprove of it. Indeed, I don’t read newspapers. I haven’t since about 1981.
Other publications are available. Some are newspapers.
Were we to club together to put a few issues of J+M out there, it may be a helpful suggestion to do it to more than one publication.
One could always try a Kickstarter campaign to fund the project. It is always possible that should the “adverts” be seen as popular the publisher might even pay for them, and pay for new ones, directly to the source.
Of course, Author may not like the idea.
Copyright is a tricky beasty.
There once was a Nassar so sick,
That he couldn’t do his party trick
He had some sort of runs
Preventing his puns
So we wish him to get well real quick.
Truthfully, I’ve no idea what type of afflication your dear friend has, but “runs” rhymed and “affliction” is too long to scan well and “poetic licence” is often taken to extremes in limericks. Just for the sake of future “poets”, here is a rather long introduction to the art and this book could be a starting point for anyone wishing to try their hand at humour.
Get well soon, Nassar.
I just got attacked (elsewhere) for pointing out that calling Indian numbering system “Arabic numerals” is an example of the Muslim habit of claiming the real world’s knowledge and inventions as Islamic……..
I know how it worked for me, AoS. I was once in that state, not so much that I didn’t have any kind of god belief, more that I was angry at the church for the lies they fed me. And mad at myself for believing that the judgmental god I learned about could literally exist. I was atheistic toward that particular god, but I was still searching for something transcendent that could fix me. I was ripe for a cult, and ended up in evangelical Christianity. So, a cult, but at least no koolaid.
I don’t want to get into a “no true Scotsman” argument here; I was an atheist, but my philosophy was weak and susceptible to emotional appeals. I wasn’t familiar with most of the good arguments against religious doctrine. I got suckered in.
Love this one so much. Jesus is such a needy brat ๐
How does saying nothing manage to work on two levels?
This is so good, I want to buy the next book (I have them all). So how long have I got to wait?
I have just donated $100. I get more laughs from this cartoon than I get from anyone and anywhere else. I look forward to every Wednesday night (Australian time)
Got all the books and can afford a bigger donation, so happy to help keep J&M going. Keep up the good work.
Actual conversation I heard once, back in High School:
Guy#1: Do you want to re-start our Apathy Club?
Guy#2: Maybe…. but I don’t really care.
Himagain, you’re obviously getting into conversations with some really ignorant people. Do they also object to calling it “algebra”?
But your name rings a bell…and has a troll connection. Could it be you’re full of shite?
If the archbishop is right, then what gives?
http://www.jesusandmo.net/2006/02/03/damn/
There’s no shortage of cats to skin, Macha, but there is way too much high five-ing going on in the lower extremities of these pages. Your last comment on the previous page, AoS, is an example of what I mean. Never mind getting into heaven, you guys need me around just to bring you all back down to earth;) http://youtu.be/NtNSljYgDe8
Ephphatha is convinced she’s right
With arguments ever so tight
She wants us for her “god”
And is a miserable sod
When we tell her she’s so full of … it.
Kissy.
Regarding Himagain on May 8, 2014 at 4:26 am, above:
Pal, *WE* call them “Arabic numerals” because that’s where the western lot nicked them from. It really doesn’t matter where they started, nor who gets the credit for inventing them, they’ve been “Arabic” in English for centuries and that’s hardly likely to change.
It might sound odd to suggest that India is primarily responsible for the invention of Arabic numerals but it’s no odder than many, many aspects of English.
Or are you one of those folk who think Dundee cake should be renamed? And that “pork pies” should be called something else unless they are made in Nunavut?
“-ish” is a suffix meaning: approximately, almost, quasi-, nearly or like. So “English” is nearly something like an approximation of a language used in England.
Yes, that sounds about right. Don’t expect its choices to make sense.
@ShallowEnder
I am guessing you meant ‘…ite’ – or is this an attempt to outdo NbH’s (disson-/conson-/asson-)-anced limericks. And is fetish a quasi-fete, or is it just like a fete? ๐
(Note to aforementioned C&B regular – get well soon, NbH.)
ShallowEnder, bravo for the verse.
Regarding things Arabic, I seem to remember something about star names or constellations being given Arabic names. My understanding is that there were great Persian (?) scientists before their religion institutionalized ignorance.
@Ephphatha
Vaguely concerning pigeons, possibly …
http://youtu.be/zWJJ3loRqUA
Fetish is a party to my mind.
@Macha
Speaking of pigeons …
“Debating creationists on the topic of evolution is rather like trying to play chess with a pigeon; it knocks the pieces over, craps on the board, and flies back to its flock to claim victory.โ
? Scott D. Weitzenhoffe
… or pretty much any other topic.
Do you agree Ephphatha ?
Where is you flock and why do you feel the need to shit all over this island of sanity and why don’t you fly right back to them since your cloaca appears to be empty?
Again, I’m off topic:
http://imgur.com/r/all/lqGv7oj
So what’s with this indifference of yours, barmaid, ignorance or apathy?
“I don’t know, and I don’t care.”
ajbdude: “The comics donโt show up in Firefox anymore.”
I had the same problem, but fixed it by using NoScript to forbid J&M from using Javascript. Now, of course, I have to permit it again in order to post, and the comic isn’t showing.
The wonders of technology!
Jim Roberts: You have to allow cloudflare as well in FF to see the cartoon.
Author: I’m a new poster here, but a long time lurker. You have given me many a good laugh, please keep up the good work!
To JohnM: You must have heard the phrase “he’s full of it”? I thought that was funnier than just hammering home the point with the extra “e”. Assonance is often used in limericks as humorous counterpoint. Or something.
Darwin Harmless : there were good Astrographers in Persia and suchlike places but that’s quite irrelevant, really. The English, and Europeans in general, inherited lots of star names from Arabic language star maps. We inherited some from the Greek and Roman maps, too.
It’s a pity we didn’t absorb some Chinese names, those are often very beautiful, but they were too distant for us to know well.
It used to be a very large world.
omg : Can I call “Godwin”?
@ shallowender
I originally thought your ellipsis was a place marker for ‘sh’. Tant pis pour moi.
One of my favourite ‘assonnant’ limericks follows:
There was a young man from Dundee
Unfortunately stung by a wasp.
When they said does it hurt
He replied,”Quite a bit.
Thank goodness it wasn’t a hornet”
Darwin Harmless says:
May 8, 2014 at 8:33 pm
…..
My understanding is that there were great Persian (?) scientists before their religion institutionalized ignorance
Well, the great library at Alexandria in Egypt was the centre of scientific knowledge from around the third century BCE. It was there that Eratosthenes became the first person to calculate the circumference of the Earth, reckoning it to be 25,000 miles, which is pretty damn close and not a bad achievement considering he only used sticks, a man to pace out the distance between Alexandria and Syene, and good old (or pretty new for the time) mathematics.
Alexandria is said to have been a pretty cosmopolitan place and attracted scholars from Africa, India, Persia, Greece, etc.; astronomy, physics, biology, and maths were among the many subjects studied there, and the library is thought to have contained as many as half a million books, each one a hand-written papyrus scroll. All but a handful were deliberately destroyed around 415CE by Christians who understood that knowledge was dangerous – to their religion, but up until that point there were indeed great Persian scientists.
With the steady spread of Christianity followed hard by those convinced by the epileptic episodes of Mo, it was to be another 1200 years before religion relented enough to allow science to raise its head over the parapet again – and even now some are still trying to prevent it.
This is one of the reasons I get angry with religion, though never with their fantasy gods. Imagine where we might be now had religion not ruined everything.
Ephphatha, I found the tone of that Valdy song annoying. My feeling is, if you want to praise your favorite genre in song, do so. You don’t need to whine about the riffraff who supposedly only like rock and roll. It comes off sounding petulant. I like almost any kind of music when it’s good, including gospel. I don’t have to buy the whole storyline to appreciate the music.
I’m imagining no religion, AoS. Kind of like Paradise.
Totally OT but this is hilarious and a lot of fun. Try the new age bullshit generator and see what kinds of deeply meaningful phrases it comes up for you. It just generated this for me:
“This life is nothing short of a condensing vector of unified inseparability.”
Man, I could write a book and give that Deepak fella a run for everybody’s money.
http://sebpearce.com/bullshit/
JohnM, that’s stretching assonance to the breaking point.
Darwin – that link is amazing, the whole thing is so perfectly executed. It reads at first like all the sentences should make sense if you think about the definitions of the words, then you realise ‘no, it is all in fact bullshit’. Just like actual new-age phrases. In fact if you’d linked me to one of the articles it generates without clarifying what it was first, I’d have believed it to be real.
“You may be ruled by materialism without realizing it. Do not let it exterminate the knowledge of your story. Without grace, one cannot heal. Selfishness is born in the gap where insight has been excluded.”
Brilliant.
Yeah whatever, Jeez, did anyone see the footie?
Nassar is never afraid to offend
He’s been known to drive us all round the bend
We miss our resident poet
And would like him to know it
And hope that he’s soon on the mend.
The archbishop was reported to say
Indifference is what we fear today
Hostility it would seem
Is the crazy christian dream
And without it they are going to pay.
We need you to bring us back down to Earth? Fucking typical egotistical, geocentric, Christian thinking. The Earth is not the be all and end all of human ambition. It may be enough for those who don’t really care about facts, but even immature children such as I like to set our sights to the Cosmos – you know, the Cosmos that is infinitely larger, infinitely more complex, and billions of years older than your
Big Book of Guesses For People Who Don’t Want to Think For ThemselvesBible would have you believe.Anyway, old fruit, what’s so wrong with showing a little appreciation for a well-turned phrase?
Now, while I’m at it, I don’t believe your claim that you were an atheist for many years, not when you display such a basic lack of understanding of the word that you can ask such a ridiculous question as why we’re angry with god.
In fact, the more I think about it, the more you sound to me like those liars for Jesus who pretend that they used to be gay until they were cured by
that symbol of wilful ignoranceGod.Acolyte, you must teach me how to do those strike throughs. I like them. Wonderfully sarcastic.
And please check out the link I posted. I’m sure you will appreciate it.
Did Ephphatha actually suggest that we’re angry at god? I must have missed that. Dead give away, that idea. These Christians simply can’t imagine that somebody would not believe in their sky fairy, so we must be just pretending to not believe in him because we’re angry at him. Duh.
I’m angry at Santa Claus. I wanted a pony and he didn’t give me one. Sure. And I’m angry at the Tooth Fairy because he/she/it stopped giving me money once I was old enough to know it was coming out of the family budget. But god? No, not angry at him. Not at all. Don’t believe he exists.
By the way, those liars for Jesus aren’t pretending that they were gay and then cured by Jesus. They actually ARE gay and are pretending they were cured by Jesus. Heavy denial. Act straight and don’t let your wrist go limp. Praise the lord, I’m cured. I can join the guys in the hot tub now.
How many of them have been caught with a rent boy by now? I’ve lost count.
My first click of the button on that website, DH, yielded “As you vibrate, you will enter into infinite ecstasy that transcends understanding.”
Oh, my. Sadly, I fear I’ve been beaten to the punch, here – I suspect there’s prior art for such a device…
…..tumbleweed…..
While the notion of being an ex-athiest is a weird one – given it’s implicit regression fro the natural to the supernatural or from reason to irrational – I can actually believe Ephphatha is such simply because of his vociferousness. Who amongst us does not know an ex-smoker who is far more vocally anti-smoking than any never-smoker?
WW:
He’s an ex-atheist who charges and convicts people of fundamentalist atheism.
I can’t help feeling he never quite got to grips with concepts involved.
While it is true there is no zealot like a convert, I believe Ephphatha thinks himself an ex-atheist because the claim is of a piece with the puerlity, irrelevancy and sheer tedium of the rest of his posts.
Darwin Harmless says:
May 14, 2014 at 3:02 am
……………..
Did Ephphatha actually suggest that weโre angry at god?
Darwin, it was a couple of comics back where he (I presume) muttered something about us fundamentalist atheists looking for a chance to vent our rage at God.
Walter, I have no problem with the idea of an ex-atheist, I simply don’t believe that one would ever make such a fundamentally(!) stupid statement as the one I mentioned above, so either our new friend is simply lying in the hope that his conversion would impress around these parts, what with him having been one of us, or he’s mistaking his disillusion with the god his original sect worshipped, and what he calls atheism was no more than the period between his rejection of the ‘wrong’ god and the finding of one that complied more with his expectations of what a god ought to be.
The ‘strike’ thing is done the same way as italics, you just type the word strike between the left- and right-facing arrows at the start of the bit you want to strike out, and at the end you do the same, but add a forward slash (the one that shares the question mark key) between the left arrow and strike.