Matthew Inman, producer of the fantastic strip The Oatmeal (including one of my favorite comics, The Bobcats), is lately on a tear by promoting evolution in a sarcastic way and dissing the religious alternative as belief in “Jibbers Crabst,” a Holy Crustacean that breathes fire.
First watch this 11-minute video by Inman that appeared on YouTube on December 5; it’s from BAHFest West 2014, whatever that is. You’ll recognize some of the creationist tropes. It’s a wonderful and absolutely hilarious talk, highly recommended by Professor Ceiling Cat.
Be sure to watch the sign-language woman, too; you’ll learn how to make signs for “priapism” and “persistent erection,” which I think amused the audience no end.
I’m pretty sure he’s an atheist. 🙂
To add insult to injury, Inman sent this out in the latest Oatmeal newsletter:
And this was just published the Oatmeal’s Facebook page:
(You can buy bumper stickers of this on the Oatmeal site.)
Inman also put this up, which also appears in his talk above. Nothing riles the faithful more than a definition like this, which in effect is true!:
And so the faithful pushed back. This hilarious interchange between Inman and a reader was posted on Oatmeal’s “Hate mail of the day“:
Here Inman seems to be imitating those psychology computer programs that just spit out programmed answers when you type in stuff about your troubles. (The psychotherapist Carl Rogers behaved much the same way.) Now that’s the way to engage the angered religionist!
h/t: Ginger K, Grania
OMG, you don’t know BAHFest? It’s the Bad Ad-hoc Hypothesis festival, wherein people use real data to try to support spurious conclusions. I think it was started by the guy who does the Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal webcomic. The winner is presented with the coveted statue of Darwin shrugging skeptically.
Here ya’ go:
http://bahfest.com/
This week I read on WEIT about two gentleman named Wilson that should definitely consider entering.
“OMG, you don’t know BAHFest?”
I mean, it’s been around since 2013!
(Thanks for the link–I needed that.)
A fun sounding event!
It delights me when random Internet people tell highly intelligent and obviously well-read people to read a book! Mr. Inman is a gift that keeps on giving!
Inman’s got a dream job; the Wikipedia article says he spends a day researching things he’s interested in and then writes about it.
I bet most of us here spend the same amount of time researching stuff; why can’t we all have comic strips?
I would use the argument that I can’t draw, but clearly that’s no barrier. 🙂
We can all have comic strips!
What we can’t all have, of course, is comic strips that are any good and that anyone else reads…..
Matthew Inman is of course Master-level at dealing with angry entitled people on the internet. He took on FunnyJunk and Carreon in much the same way, when the latter threatened to sue him for having the temerity to ask the former to stop passing his material off as their own. He not only won, he won in style.
That exchange with the angry person was great. I am surprised it took so long for the person to catch on.
Angry entitled people on the internet don’t expect the object of their scorn to not take the matter as seriously as they do. 🙂
If you haven’t already read about the infamous lawsuit, you should give this a read. I was in tears of laughter by the end of it.
http://www.popehat.com/tag/oatmeal-v-funnyjunk/
🙂
Thanks for that. I vaguely recalled the whole thing but hadn’t seen his hilarious replies to the legal request. It made me LOL.
Trolls are feeders on others’ emotions. When the emotional equation shifts in the sense they are expending more effort trying to get their target upset than this target expends in keeping calm, they go off to find a new toy that will play the game.
It’s often how I handle angry people as well. The angrier they become, the more calm I remain.
Yes. This exchange will raise one question in many people’s minds: “Why are atheists so angry?” 😜
The Oatmeal is an original, hilarious and unafraid. An inspiration.
I’m inclined to suspect that at least a few of the folks that Robert calls the “backbone of Western civilization” would be appalled by today’s religious right- certainly Descartes!!
The backbone of Western civilization also includes humanist folk like Shakespeare, Voltaire, Whitman, Camus, etc. Robert’s examples are a tad selective.
Ribald irreverent satire on bad religion is far older than some people realize. One of the most hilariously ribald anti-clerical satires ever written was done about 500 years ago by a Franciscan monk named Francois Rabelais (from whom we get the term “Rabelaisian” for raunchy irreverent humor.) It was “Gargantua and Pantagruel”. Rabelais wrote at a peak period of church corruption, and illustrated that satire is a potent weapon. As Harlan Ellison once said, When you’re talking to crazy folks, you’ve got to talk crazy back.
Sure atheist regimes have persecuted believers, usually in the name of Communism, not so much per se in the name of atheism. It does not alter the fact that the Inquisition was set up to persecute utterly innocuous and harmless dissident religious groups such as the Cathars and the Waldensians. Variants of the Inquisition persisted for centuries.
I’ll concede a half-truth to Robert’s point that atheism isn’t entirely like math, but since Robert hasn’t really clarified his counter-position, merely asserted it, there’s not much else to say there.
The Office of the Inquisition lasted until (if I remember correctly) circa 1903, when, for public relations reasons it changed its name to Office of the Doctrine of the Faith. Benedict was in charge until he became Pope.
The Inquisition still exists.
I’m not even sure the term “atheist regime” is appropriate. The regimes this canard points to didn’t try to do away with religion because they were trying to establish a rationally founded, skeptical society. I might even go do far as to say they weren’t trying to do away with religion in the name of communism. They tried to do away with religion because religious authorities were competing authorities.
They were not “atheist regimes”. They were totalitarian regimes.
Right. And the existence of those regimes is not proof that atheism is by definition totalitarian and murderous, any more than the (far more numerous examples) of cruel religious regimes is proof that religion necessitates cruelty. All that is required is authority and justification for humans to be rotten to one another. It doesn’t matter whether the logo on their book is a cross or a swastika or a hammer and sickle. Haters gonna hate.
Also, North Korea is from what I can tell basically the triple oxymoron that is a Confucian Stalinist theocracy. (“Dear Leader” is both god and dad and a commissar, all in one!)
More than a tad selective. I presume he is referring to CS Lewis. Hardly a pillar.
Plus, he may have overlooked one or two scientists. Or does he not think that science has been important to Western culture over the last 400+ years?
“Sure atheist regimes have persecuted believers, usually in the name of Communism, not so much per se in the name of atheism.”
And the million-odd people killed by the Crusades and the Inquisition centuries ago weren’t killed in the name of theism, per se, either. Simply put, the belief the God exists- in itself- compels a person to action as little as the belief in itself that God doesn’t exist. Now perhaps you can ascribe the problem specifically to Christian theism, but even that is problematic, since “Thou Shalt Not Kill” is a doctrinal command thereof. The responsibility could rightly be put on the shoulders of religious leaders who contravened the tenets of their own religion, or you can simply chalk the Crusades up to a territorial war, which would be a justification as non-ideological and pragmatic as that of the atheists who say the USSR persecuted religious clerics simply because they saw them as threats to their political authority.
Perhaps, to be precise, I should have said those regimes were motivated by *anti*theism. After all, they believed theism was a scourge and should be eliminated, all while spouting insipid happy-talk about the virtues of Reason and Rationality and Science. Sound familiar?
“I’ll concede a half-truth to Robert’s point that atheism isn’t entirely like math, but since Robert hasn’t really clarified his counter-position, merely asserted it, there’s not much else to say there.”
Well, since Matthew Inman first asserted that atheism *was* like math, your comment should be directed at least as much towards him.
But yes, I maintain that atheism is as much like math as Christianity is— precisely, not at all. Christianity and atheism are beliefs that can be adopted or abandoned, and mathematics is an area of study. They belong in two separate categories. Again, there’s not much else to say there.
(Since I’m wary about posting URLS in comments, Google “War in the name of atheism” for the Oatmeal comic I was referencing.)
Very funny. Btw. The next time you come up against the ‘Reign of Terror=atheist’ argument, here is what its instigator, Robespierre, actually believed about the ‘Supreme Being’.
‘Is it not He whose immortal hand, engraving on the heart of man the code of justice and equality, has written there the death sentence of tyrants? Is it not He who, from the beginning of time, decreed for all the ages and for all peoples liberty, good faith, and justice? He did not create kings to devour the human race. He did not create priests to harness us, like vile animals, to the chariots of kings and to give to the world examples of baseness, pride, perfidy, avarice, debauchery and falsehood. He created the universe to proclaim His power. He created men to help each other, to love each other mutually, and to attain to happiness by the way of virtue.’
Not even deism, but theism, as the 1st, 2nd and last sentences demonstrate. Quote from wikipedia’s Robespierre section. x
Yeah the ineffable ground of being is all about love. Robespierre made that case in spades!
oh the poor persecuted religious types that poor ol’ Robert says are completely wrong with their claims of something other than Robert’s “transcendent necessarily existing First Cause” bullshit.
I loved the video.
+ 1 🙂
That steamed lobster at the end was hilarious!
Is that Phil Plait I see in the background there?
It very likely was. At the link posted by Andrew in comment #1, Phil is listed as one of the judges for BAHFest West.
George
The sign language added to the fun for sure, hehe.
I think what was really funny about it was not so much the signing for priapism, but how she showed death right afterwards.
Now, all we need is a good recipe for lobster linguine for some old-fashioned syncretism….
b&
Blasphemy … meat balls and lobster don’t go together!
Hmmm…you might be on the right path. Lobster dumplings in a cream sauce served over pasta?
Or — I know! Lobster ravioli! Probably with a tomato cream sauce.
And clam chowder garnished with Chinese-style deep-fried noodles for the starter…still not sure about salad and dessert….
b&
Do NOT insult the holy sacrament!!!!
Who wrote anything insulting about it? I’m trying to figure out the best way to eat it, is all.
I mean, if you were a Christian, which would you prefer: stale crackers or cheeses fried with lamb and cod?
Now, back to the meal…seems to me that a seaweed salad would likely do the trick. Neither pasta nor fish, but visually resembles pasta and comes from the sea. That just leaves dessert….
b&
I don’t see the blasphemy in your menu, but I guess that’s for the followers of Jebbers and FSM to sort out for themselves. One thing I do know: you can propose that meal – and serve it! – without any fear of Pastafarians rioting in the streets, attacking an embassy or issuing a fatwa calling for your head in a colander.
For dessert I was thinking maybe a nod to a third made-up spiritual being (not that they aren’t all made-up): Linus’s Great Pumpkin Pie. You have to wait all night for it to be served, and it is always a disappointment. Then your friend’s little sister calls you a blockhead.
On a more serious tone, the syncretism picture makes perfect sense to me. I grew up in Brazil where Catholicism is mixed with African cults creating the unique Brazilian religions: Candomble, Umbanda and others.
Nonsense! Didn’t you listen to the end? He’s looking for a little Surf n’Turf of the soul!
One could *make* meatballs out of lobster, but that might be heretical.
lol
Inman is on a roll. . . a lobster roll.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobster_roll
Good suggestion. I think maybe tomorrow evening…
The lobster pic may have been offensive but Robert, the christian defender made the first offensive comment at the begining of his rant. He said Inman was “buttering the egos of atheists..”
Surely, for someone who takes solace in a giant, immortal lobster, any mention of butter ( or lemon juice) is EXTREMELY offensive!
I always love this crap:
With which, he commits that standard believer’s trope of: You are arguing against the wrong faith, that’s not my faith.
Well, …
As I’ve said, ad nauseum, it’s not generally required that someone must defend a dictionary definition of a word.
And, ask more or less any believer what evidence they have for their belief and what process they used to select their particular faith, expect to get a blank look. Very, very few believers critically examine their beliefs. This is not a behavior that is rewarded by religions and religious people/leaders.
I am always struck by the conflation of common uses of of words with their austere meanings – faith, believe, altruistic, theory – and the way that conflation is used to subvert their use in scientific discourse. For example, in a debate with a theist, Dawkins said he could say he has faith in his wife and believes she is not having an affair – but that this is a turn of phrase: he has faith because she has shown herself to be a loyal and honorable person; if he had evidence that she had a lover, he would no longer believe that she was honoring her vows. So, to your point, we can add the word “evidence” to the pile. The religious think wonderous natural phenomena – the feeling of spiritual connection, the complexity of organisms, the beauty of a sunset, uncanny coincidences – constitute evidence for a creator of at least an intelligent force behind the universe. Calling these “evidence” is a subversion of the word, as there is a significant leap from observation to meaning based on learned bias and wishful thinking. This is one of the most insidious logical errors humans can make, and the lack of examination you mention continues to make the conversation extremely muddled. If there is no agreement on the meaning of the terms being used, it’s impossible to have a dialogue that will go anywhere constructive. The religious bristle at the idea they “believe without evidence” because they think they have the evidence on their side. Their holy books and artifacts are also taken as evidence, and it doesn’t matter if that evidence is falsified because they even take their own belief as evidence. You couldn’t design a more perfect protective bubble around an idea if you tried.
Equivocation is one of the most-used weapons in the theist’s arsenal.
“I am always struck by the conflation of common uses of of words with their austere meanings – faith, believe, altruistic, theory – and the way that conflation is used to subvert their use in scientific discourse.”
The terms faith, belief, and altruism HAVE no use in scientific discourse. You seem to be laboring under a form of scientism, where you assume the goals of scientific investigation are the same as those of atheism.
“in a debate with a theist, Dawkins said he could say he has faith in his wife and believes she is not having an affair – but that this is a turn of phrase: he has faith because she has shown herself to be a loyal and honorable person; if he had evidence that she had a lover, he would no longer believe that she was honoring her vows.”
Yes, it was a debate with John Lennox. The audience laughed at Richard Dawkins— and rightly so. Of course, that doesn’t mean Dawkins hasn’t happily spouted the “faith is belief without evidence” canard countless times since (since, of course, his job at this point is throwing bones to his fanboys, not winning hearts and minds.)
“Calling these “evidence” is a subversion of the word, as there is a significant leap from observation to meaning based on learned bias and wishful thinking.”
There is no subversion of the word evidence involved here. Evidence is any reason to believe something is so. If a sunset strikes me as too beautiful not to have been knowingly designed by a Creator, then that- to me- is evidence, even if I’ll admit it’s purely subjective evidence, and not anything I’ll hold out to anyone else.
You, on the other hand, are conveniently assuming your own conclusion that there is no evidence for God’s existence based in observation and logic. You are conveniently assuming that all religious belief are based in “learned bias and wishful thinking”.
“This is one of the most insidious logical errors humans can make, and the lack of examination you mention continues to make the conversation extremely muddled.”
How is your lack of examination justifiable, then? When I asked Matthew Inman to provide evidence for his assertion that there is no evidence for God, I was mocked in facebook comments, but no one has even tried to give me any reason to think this is so (and I don’t see how they can, even in principle, but the fact a statement is unproveable is not a justification for making it!) Just because something is taken as axiomatically true by atheists- and happily parroted to no end- doesn’t make it true.
“The religious bristle at the idea they “believe without evidence” because they think they have the evidence on their side.”
Ah yes, the atheists love to have their cake and eat it too. “Christians are wrong because they believe in things without evidence, and the evidence they give for the things they believe is no good either!”
“Their holy books and artifacts are also taken as evidence, and it doesn’t matter if that evidence is falsified because they even take their own belief as evidence. You couldn’t design a more perfect protective bubble around an idea if you tried.”
Have you had quite enough fun with your strawman now?
There are a good number of ad hominems and presumptions about me in your comment; what I do notice is missing is any substantial rebuttal to my premise – if anything, you’re proving my point. People are free to construe a word however they see fit. However, the same word can mean different things, and that can confuse people – and, people often intentionally use that confusion to mislead (eg, evolution is “just” a theory).
“Altruism” has a very specific scientific meaning. “Evidence” and “theory” have very specific scientific meanings. Faith and belief are not science words, of course you are right. But a sunset is not evidence of anything except the incident angle of the sun against the earth’s atmosphere and the various particles and vapors suspended therein. And a person saying “I believe in x” or “I have faith in y” means two very different things if it is based on real-world patterns of evidence versus being based on fairy tales and wishful thinking. If an audience laughed when Dawkins explained this distinction, that’s a reflection on their lack of awareness, not his.
I’m not sure by your last line if you think you’ve proven some kind of point or something but I can assure you, you have not. There is no credible evidence for anything supernatural ever – as long as one doesn’t count mythology as evidence. Call it scientism or naturalism or atheism or whatever: non-theistic disciplines are uncovering the workings of the natural world in remarkable detail and finding in physics and chemistry the explanation for everything that can be known about the universe. If theists have anything to show in terms of supernatural effects in the universe – anything! – they sure haven’t shown it yet. Which is telling, because theists basically believe supernatural effects created the whole enterprise and keep it running! And which is devastating to the theist position: it’s not for science to disprove the existence of the supernatural, it’s on theists to prove that it does exist because they are the ones making claims that do not remotely fit with real-world evidence.
I wouldn’t call anything in my previous comment (or in this one) a strawman, but yes I am done with this thread.
“There are a good number of ad hominems and presumptions about me in your comment; what I do notice is missing is any substantial rebuttal to my premise”
I rebutted it handily. We both agree on what the definition of evidence is, you just don’t believe the evidence for God is valid. For the ‘evidence’ I’ve seen marshalled in service of an affirmative case for atheism, I don’t think any of it’s been valid either. If someone thinks the Omnipotence Paradox is evidence for atheism, I’ll criticize the validity of their evidence, but I won’t claim they’re equivocating on the word ‘evidence’.
“But a sunset is not evidence of anything except the incident angle of the sun against the earth’s atmosphere and the various particles and vapors suspended therein.”
Taking the argument at face value (and even I admitted it’s ‘evidence’ in a qualified sense,) the evidential nature of the argument from beauty is not that the existence of a beautiful object is a mystery that can be solved only by plugging in God, but that the beauty of that object, or the sense of beauty, is apprehended immediately as divine expression. No number of scientific pedanticisms you throw at a sunset will deter a believer who sees in that sunset the handiwork of a loving God.
The always-oblivious Dawkins perfectly illustrates this kind of blinkered pedanticism when he takes on the argument from beauty in The God Delusion. “God didn’t write the Heiliger Dankgesang, Beethoven did.” F***kin’-A, Dr. Dick!
“And a person saying “I believe in x” or “I have faith in y” means two very different things if it is based on real-world patterns of evidence versus being based on fairy tales and wishful thinking. If an audience laughed when Dawkins explained this distinction, that’s a reflection on their lack of awareness, not his.”
Can you not see how you’re begging the question here? Are you being purposefully obtuse, or are you truly incapable of examining your own premises?
Obviously, I don’t agree that belief in God “based on fairy tales and wishful thinking”- and obviously Lennox doesn’t agree either- so any persuasive argument you construct upon that premise is dead in the water.
“There is no credible evidence for anything supernatural ever.”
Baldly asserting this as fact doesn’t make it so. I repeat the question: are you being purposefully obtuse? If you make an assertion, you are going to have to substantiate it.
“Call it scientism or naturalism or atheism or whatever: non-theistic disciplines are uncovering the workings of the natural world in remarkable detail and finding in physics and chemistry the explanation for everything that can be known about the universe.”
Yes, that is precisely scientism— silly old irrational, self-refuting scientism.
Science can explain everything in the Universe according to laws, except- of course- where those laws originated from (since the idea of a law creating itself or sustaining itself is logically incoherent.) Oh yeah, and science can’t explain *why* we should believe science can explain everything, nor can it explain the experience of love or beauty, &c. &c. &c.
Nothing we’ve learned about science has done anything to diminish the need for a transcendental First Cause. Moreover, nothing we learn about science *can* diminish the need for a transcendental First Cause, not even in principle. The fact that atheists think otherwise only points to atheists’ deficiency in understanding Cosmological arguments, not to theists’ deficiencies in understanding science.
Being a theist doesn’t mean I think you can’t find a proximate cause for a natural phenomenon, nor does it mean I think you can’t find a proximate cause for that proximate cause, &c. However, there must either be an infinite regress of proximate causes, or they must reach a terminus in a *super*-natural cause. The Bible describes God as the fixer of the laws of heaven and earth, and it is this fixity of law that scientific investigation takes as axiomatic. The fact that the Universe operates by laws that are intelligible to reason is in fact an argument for theism, not atheism,
So, this supernatural First Cause which you claim is necessary to have brought the universe into existence – that would be Allah, is that not right?
There is after all precisely as much evidence for it being Allah as there is for it being Yahweh or Ahura Mazda or Yuanshi Tianzuan – which is to say, absolute proof (for believers) and none whatsoever for anyone who doesn’t buy into the belief.
By the way, atheism doesn’t *need* any evidence. It’s what you get when you decide none of the thousand and one claimed deities have any credible evidence to support their existence. It’s no use quoting the Bible at us, we don’t buy it.
“So, this supernatural First Cause which you claim is necessary to have brought the universe into existence – that would be Allah, is that not right?”
No, the Cosmological arguments don’t specify whether they refer to the God of the Bible, or the God of the Koran, or some other monotheist God. So what? They’re not supposed to. They simply indicate the existence of a timeless, spaceless, immaterial First Cause.
“There is after all precisely as much evidence for it being Allah as there is for it being Yahweh or Ahura Mazda or Yuanshi Tianzuan – which is to say, absolute proof (for believers) and none whatsoever for anyone who doesn’t buy into the belief.”
There’s that idiot atheist trope again! “There is no evidence…” Proclaiming it doesn’t make it so! If you’re going to assert this as fact, you’re going to have to provide me with some reason to believe it. How can I get this very simple concept through your thick skulls?
Simple.
Present the evidence, already.
b&
Lordy, what’s wrong with you all?
Tepeu and Gucumatz thought everything into being. How else would their legacy be preserved?
Name-calling is not acceptable on this website. You’re on moderation now.
Keep it civil please, or you don’t get to post.
~ Grania
When the (ceiling) cat’s away, the (theist) mice will play!
Robert might know his Ten Commandments, but he clearly has read Da Roolz…
/@
…n’t…
D’oh.
/@
Eh, quite the contrary. That’s basically the overwhelming conclusion of all science ever since the beginning.
Newton demonstrated that there’s no Unmoved Prime Mover that moves the planets; they just move.
Darwin demonstrated that life just evolves, bereft of any Grand Design, let alone a Designer.
As if that wasn’t enough, more recently, quantum mechanics has shown that, at very small scales, shit just happens without anything causing it; and, at large scales, relativistic mechanics makes the very notion of causality itself incoherent.
And seeing that everything we can ever even hypothetically know or experience passed through the Big Bang, and the Big Bang was exactly the sort of uncaused causally-incoherent phenomenon as described by both quantum and relativistic mechanics, we can be overwhelmingly certain that any gods, even if they “exist” in some reified sense of the term, are perfectly absent from our corner of reality.
You’re welcome to ignore science, of course, if you like. Doesn’t change a simple fact, though: Eppur si muove.
Cheers,
b&
“Newton demonstrated that there’s no Unmoved Prime Mover that moves the planets; they just move.”
Uh, the Unmoved Prime Mover is who set the whole shebang into motion in the first place. That motion follows prescribed laws be a devastating discovery for a form of monotheism that never existed. As I already explained, the Bible clearly describes God as the fixer of laws of heaven and Earth, not the immediate proximate cause to every natural event. If such discoveries would be “devastating” to any beliefs, it would be belief in the pagan gods who *were* said to be immediate proximate causes to natural events. Perhaps not coincidentally, the pagan gods don’t have many partisans these days. (I’m not sure they were properly “supernatural” in the first place, but I’ll leave that question to those who know more about pagan religions than I do.)
I’ll repeat what I said before: That the Universe follows laws that are intelligible to reason is an argument for theism, not atheism.
“Darwin demonstrated that life just evolves, bereft of any Grand Design, let alone a Designer.”
Actually, I’ll admit that could be seen to intrude on God’s turf a little bit, but of course even Augustine in the 4th Century warned against a literal reading of Genesis. As for any other scientific discovery that could be injurous to Christianity, I’m honestly at a loss. Big Bang cosmology was very much a vindication for Biblical creation… so much so that the USSR suppressed it.
“As if that wasn’t enough, more recently, quantum mechanics has shown that, at very small scales, shit just happens without anything causing it”
Uh, no, vitual particles don’t emerge uncaused. They emerge from a pre-existing quantum vacuum, in accordance to a pre-existing set of laws. The fact that they have a pre-determined nature (mass, spin, charge) should show that we’re not talking about uncaused effects here. After all, we’re not talking about microwave ovens popping into existence.
“and, at large scales, relativistic mechanics makes the very notion of causality itself incoherent.”
Buh?
“And seeing that everything we can ever even hypothetically know or experience passed through the Big Bang, and the Big Bang was exactly the sort of uncaused causally-incoherent phenomenon as described by both quantum and relativistic mechanics, we can be overwhelmingly certain that any gods, even if they “exist” in some reified sense of the term, are perfectly absent from our corner of reality.”
Wow! That is truly an éclat of convoluted logic! Even if I grant your premises, I can still ask you— where did the quantum vacuum come from, and who dreamed up these laws of relativity and quantum mechanics?
“You’re welcome to ignore science, of course”
Ah, yes, I’d like to hear you tell Hans Halvorson (among many other scientists who are Christian) that he’s “ignoring science”. I think your understanding of science is flawed, and your understanding of religion and philosophy is nonexistent.
I’m sorry, but that’s the most primitive of superstitions, right up there with flat-Earth heliocentricism, the demonic possession theory of disease, and the faeries at the foot of the garden being the ones responsible for making the flowers bloom.
First of all, Aristotelian Metaphysics held that objects only moved when something pushed upon them, which makes a certain intuitive sense to those unfamiliar with (near-)frictionless surfaces, such as rocks gliding over an ice field. Newton turned that upside down. It doesn’t take action to make things move; it takes action to change the movement things already have.
Essentially, Newton made us realize that motion is just another property of an object, no different in principle from its color or temperature or weight. You don’t need to invoke a Prime Painter to explain why something is the color it is, so why invoke a Prime Mover to explain its current trajectory?
That’s just the most transparent of special pleading. Which super-god fixed YHWH’s laws so that YHWH might fix our familiar laws? If YHWH needs no such fixing, then we don’t have anything broken than needs him.
…so much so that LeMaitre, the Catholic priest whose thought it initially was, told the Pope he’d be a fool if he equated the Big Bang with Genesis 1.
Seriously, if you’re going to play on this stage, you really need to get your facts straight.
I’m sorry, but you will not find a single (employed) physicist who would agree with that statement of yours. Might as well claim that apples don’t fall from trees after all.
Sorry, but I don’t have the time right now to give you a basic lesson on relativity. But the sort of thing you learn in the first day of any introduction to the subject is that, at sufficient energies, person A will observe events in the order, 1, 2, 3, 4; and person B in a different frame of reference will observe those same events in the order, 4, 3, 2, 1. And person C in yet another frame may well observe them in the order, 2, 4, 1, 3. As such, classical causality can’t even hypothetically make sense, if there’s no fundamental connection between event and cause.
Sure — but, first, tell me: who made YHWH, and who dreamed up his own properties?
When you answer me that question, I’ll answer you yours.
Cheers,
b&
I’d say the odds are at least 10-1 that Robert is a victim of Catholic education, rehashing Aquinas centuries after he’s been dismissed out of serious thought.
Only a medieval education allows you to simultaneously think “everything has a cause” and “let’s worship an uncaused cause.” You have to put fingers in ears, close eyes, and avoid reading anyone after Hume.
“Only a medieval education allows you to simultaneously think “everything has a cause” and “let’s worship an uncaused cause.”
“Everything has a cause” is not a premise for ANY Cosmological argument! Atheists seem to have a pathological inability to correctly characterize any first cause argument. Please Google Edward Feser’s excellent article, “So you think you understand the cosmological argument?”
I read the “excellent” article. It was nasty and brutish, but not short.
If you think the definition of evidence I expressed is in agreement with your definition, then I am an even less effective comment writer than I thought.
What really hit home for me was your proof that the universe has a supernatural cause. I mean, ” an infinite regress of proximate causes” – what are the chances! All those physicists and astronomers wasting their time on their “facts” and their “theories” when the answer has been there all along in their hotel room nightstand. They’ve got nothing to say about the transcendental First Cause (TFC)! Ha! They don’t even acknowledge that is a thing! Those who have the inside details on the TFC can go on for days and days about how wrong “science” is, no matter how little they know about science.
Having said that, you know what? You’ve convinced me! You are absolutely right: atheism is baseless, biased scientism and religion has all the proof required; Richard Dawkins is an uneducated, shallow buffoon; evidence is whatever someone decides to call evidence, independent of real-world “facts” or “physical properties” (this is great news for police and prosecutors); emotions such as the response to “beauty” are not explained by natural brain functions or evolution or anything else – it’s the finger of god poking a person in their mind’s eye; and as to sunsets, I’ll go you one better – they’re not “evidence” of a god, they are proof of the existence of a god.
And that god is Ra, who wept and from the tears he wept came man. I have lots of evidence for this: first of all, really, really old religion; second, the gospel of Eqypt is not written on flimsy paper – it’s carved in stone! So, substantial; and finally, most importantly, I claim to believe it, which is all the evidence I or anyone else requires. To paraphrase, “No number of Judeo-Christian pedanticisms you throw at a sunset will deter a believer in Ra who sees in that sunset the handiwork of the Egyptian sun god.”
Most of us happily disavow fairies, astrology, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, YHVH, and Ra without first immersing ourselves in The Book of the Dead and purifying ourselves for the coming journey of our seven souls. Clearly, the fact that the Universe operates by laws that are intelligible to reason is in fact an argument for Egyptian theism.
QED! Thank you for showing me – pun intended – the light.
Who? Ra! Who? Ra! Who? Ra!
You converted me from my naive belief in The Committee of Gods.
Response to beauty = the finger of god, poking you in your mind’s eye.
So win. Very snortle.
And besides the Egyptians also worshipped cats, so obviously their beliefs must be respected. What more proof do we need?
This is a brilliant comment, and has already been stolen. It is a great alternate approach to the outsider test for faith.
In my math class (all 18 year olds) there is a girl who doesn’t want to take the final on Saturday because she is a seventh-day adventist. I desperately wanted to ask her why (but restrained myself); even more I wanted to get her together with the one jew and one christian and ask them to explain to each other why their own religion is right, and those of the other two are wrong, so they could see how they have uncritically accepted what they were taught, and have no evidence that their beliefs are true. But, such is not to be.
“And, ask more or less any believer what evidence they have for their belief and what process they used to select their particular faith, expect to get a blank look.”
Ask a typical high school graduate what evidence they have that Alexander the Great invaded Persia, or what evidence they have that the sun’s energy is created by fusing hydrogen nuclei, and be prepared for the same blank look.
The amount of examination most people give their beliefs is no indication of the validity of the beliefs themselves.
This BAHFest thing is hilarious! When are they going to invite Ken Ham as a keynote speaker?
LOL surf and turf of the soul.
While the content of the video was funny, his pacing and diction are horrible. It even killed some of the jokes for me. I’ve never been a huge fan of his (his ego rises up a lot on certain subjects) I’ll still give this a B.
Really! I thought his delivery was great.
There’s no way a believer could find this funny. It is a pointed critique the heart of their cognitive dissonance.
That’s bound to be painful and unpleasant.
He sounds really upset.
I explained why I was upset, and it has nothing to do with Jibbers Crabst being incisive satire. In fact, I’ve already explained why it fails as satire- because contingent, arbitrary things in the world are disanalogous with God- and of the hundreds of replies I’ve seen to my comments, not one person has lifted a finger to debate this point.
Perhaps I find it unfunny just because that geeky, Monty Python, it’s-funny-because-I-recognize-the-reference style of humor doesn’t appeal to me. For atheists endlessly parroting “touched by his noodly appendage” memes, I suppose the appeal is more for fomenting group cohesion, and coaxing each other’s egos, rather than for being ha-ha funny.
You sound upset. Did you capitalize ‘god’ on purpose?
If I find something unfunny, it rarely upsets me unless it openly displays a contempt for a group of people for reasons that have nothing to do with their choices.
Obviously, this doesn’t include religion, something that is obviously a matter of choice.
I think Robert’s steamed.
Maybe he just needs to be buttered up a bit?
b&
I capitalize “God” because my broiling antitheism doesn’t blind me to the basic rules of grammar, which say we should capitalize proper names.
I thought his proper name was “Yahweh”. The Encyclopedia of Gods lists thousands of them. Your’s must be very special if he gets to use the generic term as a proper noun.
No to pick nits, but ‘god’ is not a proper noun. If you are referring to the god of Abraham, its name is ‘Yahweh’ or ‘Jehovah’. ‘god’ is a common noun, which Christianity has appropriated for its exclusive use as a placeholder for the name of ‘the only god’, in effect relegating all other gods to the realm of delusion. It’s the same with the word ‘catholic’, a word meaning ‘universal’ which the Roman church has appropriated to refer to the the only truly universal (i.e. ‘real’) religion. Both are arrogant the presumption of groups of people as deluded as those they are deliberately denigrating.
because contingent, arbitrary things in the world are disanalogous with God
Why do you think that?
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That Ain’t no lobster. That’s an Anomalocariidid!
Oh man, I so need one of those weaponised orifices …
‘scuse me … channelling gods here. My attenton is torn … But the FSM is happy to meet the Lobster for – how does a crab bake sound? And Sithrak … really you do not want to know how little special attention This One’lsspit is getting. Sithrak is an Equal Opportnity God.
FSM sends Sithrak an invite to the crab bake. PZ too ; no pharyungulas on this barbie! PHONE CALL … palaeontologist Barbie has accepted her invite, don’t stand too close to the fire, eh?
there is an anecdote going around that Ii am posting from the pub. The data from the barmaid … actually agrees with that anecdote.
Terribly sexist, I know. But that signer is one HOT shillouette. Mmmmhmmmm. Hands too! Sorry, normal transmssin will be resumed as soon as the barmaid does her funky stuff!
OK, she’s not a signer. Well, not BSL, for sure. Putting out some signe for absolute sure. Priapism FT … oh?
Oh, Lobster! That was deeply hilarious. That guy is so slated for a horrible death at the hands of loving Xtians.
Barmaid would help my speeelung, but there’s this pair in robes in – look decidedly chilly – two Guinness-es …(hic)
Skål!
I’m afraid coffee is as far as I’ll go beverage-wise tonight.
But maybe a little bit something else. 🙂
3-1 barca. All is well.
I saw there was football. That was the limit of the time I wasted upon it.
I’m afraid my time is cheap and easily compromised. 🙂
Football is a topic on which compromise is impossible.A burning foul. To think of it is to produce an own-goal, as a goal-keeper. … And I run out of holes to dig for the “noble” game.
My games master must be so proud of how effective it was to beat me with a stick to encourage me to play the “knobbled” game.
I hope he’s not dead – I still feel the need to kick him in the gonads, even if he must be n his 70s now.
I find the motivation to follow my beloved team is closely related to their perfomance.
Sometimes it’s so shite that the only sane option is to stay away.
Being easily seduced comes with its perks.
What are you on these days, Aidan?!
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Beer. By the bucket.
to be more accurate, cider (5.5%), but stll by the bucket.
Have tablet. WITH keyboard. Beats hunt’n’peck on the phone. And waiting to get home and Internet through my hangover.
Cheers!
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Did you notice the appearance of unicode symbol 1F41C 🐜 ANT in another thread? Your signature awaits : &#x 1F41C; (without the space in the middle). 🐜
No need for obscure codes in iOS or OS X! 🐜
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😎
That was “Eliza”, wasn’t it? You know, sometimes when I’m god-squad-swatting I wonder if I’m talking to a bot. Making an “Evil-utin” bot to talk to the Creatin Bot does have a certain appeal to it. Partiivcularly when it forces them to (get this) EVOLVE their defences.
IT is more fun than pullng the wings off flies. And ethically, it is much more defensible.
I think what Inman seemed to be doing was a minor variant of “u mad bro?”
Oh, some very rude words about a podcast in my ear about trauma care. Red Button for me – I have killed one more person than I wish to through getting trauma care wrong. I do not wish to repeat the errors. (Or the experience, but particularly the errors.)
BBC World Service – Science Hour, a file called “science_20141102-1505c.mp3”
Medical science is just so …. Sry. Pissed. Get the podscast. don’t drive and listen.
‘Sry. Pissed.’
Manifestly.
🙂
How’s the hangover, Aidan? 🔕🔇
🙂
Throbbing.
I’ll give the answer my younger brother gave me when he was 18 years old: “I don’t get (no steenkeeng) hangovers. Yeah, my head hurts, my stomach hurts, and my mouth seems like they drove the rubbish truck through it. But no, no hangovers.”
🙂 !!
Hmmm, Unlike their UK service podcasts, it seems that World Service podcasts are only available for about 3 weeks after broadcast. So that one has expired. Nothing earlier than Nov 26th now at http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/docarchive
in a nutshell:
“ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions.”
— thomas jefferson
Reblogged this on My WordPress Notepad.
If only Robert had bothered to read The Oatmeal contact page he would have discovered:
1) How very, very lucky he was that Matthew Inman answered him at all.
2) How very little sympathy (as in none) his outrage would engender.
But I’m glad he didn’t as the exchange, such as it was, as in the flow of information seemed to be one way, was vastly amusing.
On the plus side, Robert can spell.
On the minus side, the conscious flexing of his vocabulary for rhetorical (or perhaps theatrical) effect is a rather comical fail when juxtaposed against Inman’s style of humor.
I understood the dynamic of the “exchange” perfectly- and in fact I even thought of the old Eliza program- but I continued because I was hoping something would sink in— and I’m glad I did, because those words have now been seen by half a million people. For the great masses of atheists simply looking for reassurance (and you should have seen how they were circling the wagons on facebook) I can only hope I put a pebble in their shoe, or a chink in their armor.
Don’t flatter yourself.
He has to, since nobody else will. 😉
Ah Robert, you remind me of the little boy who upon discovering a room full of shit as his gift on christmas morning proceeded to get his shovel out and start digging, declaring that there had to be a pony in there somewhere.
Good luck on your continued excavations in the scat heap of religion.
💩
That exchange was priceless! I enjoy maintaining theistic arguments for the existence of Santa Claus. I follow by saying people only pretend God exists so the children aren’t disappointed and they can’t expect me to take them seriously. Then I how many times they got what they wanted for Christmas and compare that to how many times their prayers have been answered.
“I hated Christmas as a child. I believed in Father Christmas. And so did my parents.” — Carrot Top
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That video was hilarious. Not so much Inman, as the sign language lady. She’s a comic genius.
Was she really doing sign language, or just a comedian? I agree, she was a riot.
I think she was really signing. She spells some words out. Sometimes the people who sign can be a real riot.
Wasn’t there a guy recently who conned his way into faking it during an Obama speech?
At Nelson Mandela’s funeral.
That was the one. 🙂
I suspect a well-rehearsed double act – brilliant!