thought of the day.474

The Tea Party’s general thrust is complaints against the Federal government; the 99% folks seem to be focusing on corporations, particularly the financial sector. In some regards, I think they are both right. But it is not because they are people’s enemies; if so then Pogo’s line is true: “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Corporations and government are not aliens; they are lines of work we are all involved in. However, because we are fallible beings with positive and negative traits, they can become dysfunctional cultures and, I think, they are more dysfunctional than in times past.

We are indeed individuals with individual consciousnesses who make individual decisions, but we also congregate into social groupings and each one develops a culture to which we contribute and which also shapes us. The family is a culture, the place you work and what you do is a culture, your place of worship is a culture, your neighborhood is a culture, if you do a hobby that you do with others – well, that is a culture. Cultures have rules and beliefs and ways of doing things. Each city, each rural area, each state, has a culture right up to our national culture. You can pick out general traits of each culture. We hardly give them a second thought.

We have become quite aware of dysfunctional family cultures: the ones plagued by substance abuse, the ones plagued by physical and/or psychological abuse, the broken homes, the stressed out close to the breaking point. Any individual culture can become dysfunctional, from the smallest to the largest. Blaming does a lot more harm than good; blaming itself, I think, is dysfunctional. But probably we all do it from time to time. I know I do. The thing is to not attack the institution; the thing is to find and attack the dysfunction.

Franklin Budd Siegle

thought of the day.473

“The Bible claims that Jesus Christ was his own father, his own son, and a metaphysically nondescript substance called the Holy Spirit, all at the same time and in the same respect. This is like saying I'm a human being, a school bus, and a mango all at the same time and in the same respect. This is metaphysically impossible.”

_Michael Disunequality Joneas (internet forum post)

thought of the day.472

Would you want to spend your weekend hanging out with someone who tortured animals in his basement? Spend a year living with a guy who tortured women in his basement? Yet Christians look forward to spending eternity with someone who promises to torture countless humans in his basement—forever.

thought of th day.471

What can we atheists offer to the world in joyful appreciation? A huge question, an important question.

We cannot offer Santa Claus for adults; we can’t compete with supernatural grace that freely promises heaven. But we can offer…

* Clear, clean, logical minds uncorrupted by promises of the improbable and impossible; we embrace facts.
* Logical consistency of our thinking makes us skeptics of snake oil salesmen (natural and supernatural).
* Without fear of a supernatural punisher, we go wherever the microscope and telescope lead us.
* Scientific advances far beyond outdated popular beliefs and prejudices result.
* So we have cars, microwaves, computers, hybrid foods to feed the hungry, condoms to limit their number, etc.
* We recognize that quality of life is more valuable than mere quantity of life.
* We care for others compassionately, because our logical minds tell us this improves this planetary life for us all.
* We support individual freedom and personal responsibility for everyone.
* Believers in fairy tales don’t need to fear us; we respect fellow humans above ideology.
* We enjoy reasonable amounts of learning, sex, love, eating, etc., etc. without guilt or fear.
* We offer a wisely selfish morality that uses anything from tradition or science to improve our planet.
* So we help our neighbors get more out of life even when the press is not looking; this helps our planet.
* We atheists guarantee that anyone embracing atheism will never suffer for a moment after death.
* After death atheists get exactly the same amount of happiness as any believer; we guarantee it!

~Jim gressinger

thought of the day.470

“First of all, what the fuck is objective morality? Second, if it comes from SOMEONE else (god) it is still subjective. We just do what the subject commands: Cant see much objectivity there.

Third of all, what's wrong with subjective morals? We all have them. Atheists can affirm that they do at least, and they are moral people.”

~Someone’s response to a debate on YouTube

thought of the day.469

I wonder how many Christians pray to their God to douse the flames of hell and how many are just glad they’re not going to burn?

thought of the day.468

On the virgin birth of Jesus, in Isaiah 7:14, Isaiah used the word almah to describe the mother of a child Christianity says was the messiah. But almah means "young woman" in Hebrew, not virgin. (The word for virgin in Hebrew is betulah.) Although some biblical scholars have made note of this, they fail to go on and develop the enormous implications of the matter. The notion of a virgin birth first appears in Matthew 1:18, 22-23, where Matthew says the virgin birth was a fulfillment of a prophecy by Isaiah in 7:14. But not only didn't Isaiah, as we have seen, use the word virgin, which all by itself refutes Matthew's virgin birth of Jesus, but the very context in which Isaiah was speaking absolutely precludes the notion of such a prophecy by Isaiah. I elaborate in my book, Isaiah told Ahaz, the king of Judea, that by the time the child of the young woman, a boy, was old enough to know right from wrong, Ahaz's enemies, the kings of Israel and Syria (Pekah and Rezin) would be dead. And the two kings died around 731-732 B.C. So the fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy in 7:14 took place close to 800 years before Jesus was even born, conclusively negating Matthew's averment that Isaiah's prophecy pertained to the virgin birth of Jesus.

~Vincent Bugliosi

thought of the day.467

In my many conversations with Christians the notion that “humanity is wicked” has been asserted on numerous occasions. This of course jives with the biblical account of the Fall of Man and the reason we are all sinners worthy of eternal torture in Hell.

To be human is to be kind and cruel, open-minded and closed, full of love and hate, goodwill and ill and countless other things. To say humans are wicked and leave it at that is absurd, devalues humanity and is one of the many reasons I despise Christianity.

thought of the day

"Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is OK and that eating shellfish is an abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount - a passage that is so radical that it's doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application."

~ Barack Obama

From the GOSPEL OF THOMAS
“Jesus at five years clears pools of water. On the Sabbath makes 12 clay sparrows. Jesus claps his hands and the sparrows fly away. Annas's son disturbs the pool and Jesus causes him to wither up. A child bumps into Jesus--angers him---and drops dead. The complaining parents are blinded. First day at school Jesus knows his letters from Alpha to Omega. Teacher asks Joseph to take Jesus away--saying: I sought a disciple and found a master. " Jesus curses associates and then heals them, Playing with children on housetop) one falls off and dies. Jesus makes him come alive. Young man cuts foot with axe. Jesus restores foot. Sows grain and at once reaps one hundred measures. Father cuts a beam too short. Jesus lengthens it. Another takes him to school he preaches a sermon. James is gathering twigs--viper bites him. Jesus breathes on wound--James is cured--the viper bursts. Raises dead workman. Story of teaching in the temple at twelve. Flee with Jesus to Egypt. Ate grain from a field--which perpetually yielded miraculous harvest. Lived one year with a widow. Cast dead fish in water--they became alive. They return to Palestine---Jesus was seven. Puts many garments in black dye. Pulls out each a different color. Changes children into pigs. Children enter a furnace---come out goats--Jesus changes them back into children. Jesus slides on a sunbeam. Hangs a pitcher on a sunbeam. Makes a lion bring back a boy. Cures man who swallowed a viper.”

Isn’t the Apocrypha clear evidence (to Protestants and unbelievers anyway) how easy it was to deceive people with utter nonsense?

thought of the day.464

"The list of things about which we strictly have to be agnostic doesn't stop at tooth fairies and celestial teapots. It is infinite. If you want to believe in a particular one of them -- teapots, unicorns, or tooth fairies, Thor or Yahweh -- the onus is on you to say why you believe in it. The onus is not on the rest of us to say why we do not. We who are atheists are also a-fairyists, a-teapotists, and a-unicornists, but we don't have to bother saying so."

~ Richard Dawkins

thought of the day.463

“Where knowledge ends, religion begins.”

~Benjamin Disraeli

thought of the day.462

Faith is a virtue in religion, a vice in science.

thought of the day.461

Science helps us assess which answers are better than others — at least for now.

thought of the day.460

PZ's food for thought

Category: Culture Wars • Policy and Politics
Posted on: February 1, 2011 3:04 PM, by Josh Rosenau

PZ has decided he hasn't peeved enough people, and made a list of atheist arguments he dislikes. And he's right. For instance, he's down on:

Dictionary Atheists. Boy, I really do hate these guys. You've got a discussion going, talking about why you're an atheist, or what atheism should mean to the community, or some such topic that is dealing with our ideas and society, and some smug wanker comes along and announces that "Atheism means you lack a belief in gods. Nothing more. Quit trying to add meaning to the term." As if atheism can only be some platonic ideal floating in virtual space with no connections to anything else; as if atheists are people who have attained a zen-like ideal, their minds a void, containing nothing but atheism, which itself is nothing. Dumbasses.

…there is more to my atheism than simple denial of one claim; it's actually based on a scientific attitude that values evidence and reason, that rejects claims resting solely on authority, and that encourages deeper exploration of the world. My atheism is not solely a negative claim about gods, but on a whole set of positive values that I will emphasize when talking about atheism. That denial of god thing? It's a consequence, not a cause.

Now I don't claim that my values are part of the definition of atheism … nor do I consider them universal to atheism. …

nobody becomes an atheist because of an absence of values, and no one becomes an atheist because the dictionary tells them they are. I think we also do a disservice to the movement when we pretend it's solely a mob of individuals who lack a belief, rather than an organization with positive goals and values.

I don't disagree. Where this could get problematic is if atheism became a label for a movement uncoupled from the dictionary definition. Or if an atheist movement driven by a set of additional values excluded other people who share those additional values just because those other people didn't agree about the god thing. To me, this raises questions about whether we need an atheist movement per se (beyond a movement to defend the rights and concerns specific to dictionary atheists, naturally), or atheists would be better served by joining or forming coalitions with non-atheists who share the same values and goals. But that's a different discussion.

PZ's other pet peeve arguments:

Babies are all atheists or I'm an atheist by default, because I was raised without religion. Nope. Uh-uh. Same problem as the Dictionary Atheist — it implies atheism is simply an intellectual vacuum. … If babies are atheists, then so are trees and rocks — which is true by the dictionary definition, but also illustrates how ridiculously useless that definition is.

Babies might also have an in-built predisposition to accept the existence of caring intelligences greater than themselves, so they might all lean towards generic theism, anyway. Mommy is God, after all. …

The "I believe in no gods/I lack belief in gods" debate. I have heard this so often, the hair-splitting grammatical distinctions some atheists think so seriously important in defining themselves. All you're doing is defining yourselves as anal retentive freaks, people! Get over it. …

I don't care. Tell me what virtues you bring, what experiences brought you here, why your values matter to society. The fine-grained shuffling about to define yourself so precisely is simply narcissistic masturbation.

Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings. The second sentence is false. Religion does not turn you into a terrorist. The overwhelming majority of religious people have similar values to yours; my church-going grandmother would have been just as horrified at people using their faith to justify murdering people as the most hardened atheist, and there have been atheist individuals who also think they are justified in killing people for the cause. So stop saying this!…

"I just believe in one less god than you do".

The theist you're arguing with did not go through a process where he analyzed his beliefs logically, and excluded 99% of all gods by reason and their lack of evidence; in fact, he probably never in his life seriously considered any of those other faiths (he is 99% Dictionary Atheist, in other words). He came to his personal faith by way of a series of personal, positive (to him!) predispositions, not by progressive exclusion of other ideas, and he's simply not going to see the relevance of your argument. Would you be swayed if someone pointed out that you disbelieve astrology, homeopathy, tarot, witchcraft, and palmistry, and he has simply gone one step further than you, and also disbelieves in evolution?

Similarly, you did not go through a list of religions, analysing each one, and ticking them off as unbelievable. I certainly didn't. Instead, you come to the table with an implicit set of criteria, like evidence and plausibility and experimental support, and also a mistrust of unfounded authority or claims that are too good to be true, and they incline you to accept naturalism, for instance, as a better explanation of the world. Turning it into a quantitative debate about how many gods we accept, instead of a substantial debate about the actual philosophical underpinnings of our ideas, is kind of lame, I think.

This all makes sense to me, and it's nice to see atheists critiquing their own bad arguments.

thought of the day. 459

“Discovery and invention are often greeted as unwelcome intruders because they inaugurate new truth through new explanations of causality. A new truth may be seen as a new threat. Those threatened by new truth may ignore the truth, hide the truth, distort the truth, destroy the truth, or reject the truth to gain some perceived or real advantage. Those who attack, however, the most confirmed and verified truths, may not always do so out of fear. Their assault upon truth may be motivated by high ideals and a zeal for the preservation of some — as they perceive it — greater truth.”

~ Jay Stuart Snelson

thought of the day.458

“The fundamental defect of Christian ethics consists in the fact that it labels certain classes of acts 'sins' and others 'virtue' on grounds that have nothing to do with their social consequences.”

~ Bertrand Russell