While one may correctly say that evolution is a fraud, that is not to say that that same person “believes in†Creation as it is literally set forth in Genesis.
The answer is: We don’t know where we came from. Let’s find out.
Evolution is as much, if not more, of an irrational religion than what any Creationist spouts.
Sean O’leary
The Church is funded entirely by your purchases of FSM merchandise. Thank you for your support.
An elaborate spoof on Intelligent Design, The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is neither too elaborate nor too spoofy to succeed in nailing the fallacies of ID. It's even wackier than Jonathan Swift's suggestion that the Irish eat their children as a way to keep them from being a burden, and it may offend just as many people, but Henderson, described elsewhere as a 25-year-old "out-of-work physics major," puts satire to the same serious use that Swift did. Oh, yes, it is very funny. -- Scientific American
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@El Peatieablo Sep 14th, 2007 at 8:46 am: “@Blackbird … I just wish you would think about what you are typing.”
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I lost count of the times I’ve been wanting to shout that at fundies. Sometimes I DID launch that remark, but never saw any reply. Strange…
@Blackbird, your post reads like a typical ‘How To Place An Argument for Atheism’. You make all these bizarre generalizations like, “you can’t dis xians because then you would be dising the xian scholars who proved things as fact.”
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Puh-leeze! That is like saying that people are not allowed to question politicians because there were good politicians out there who made a difference. Or you can’t question the media because some of the reporters aren’t biased.
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So when the xians who didn’t get eaten by the lions began torching people during the Inquisition, was that one of those big steps towards loving everyone? How about when all of those xians went charging down to the holy land in their crusades and slaughtering the locals? Was that all about the love? Or even in my own country during the forties and fifties when they dragged the aboriginals from their homes and sent them to xian schools for ‘their own good’, and the kindly priests ended up molesting and torturing those poor helpless children, was that all about the love?
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So Blackbird, go ahead and continue making all those generalizations about how your chosen religion has brought love and peace into this world. But not until you go and do a little research into modern day xians and fundies. And find out about how they are advocating the death of doctors and bombing abortion clinics because they find it perfectly acceptable to kill people in their warped and crazy minds. Or how they think that any other person in the world deserves everlasting torture because they happen to have a different religion they believe in.
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The come back and tell us about all this love.
*sigh* Let’s play “Demolish the Poor Christian’s Illogical Argument”. If you already read Blackbird’s post, you can skip over the quoted parts.
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“Please don’t stone me with hateful words, to do so destroys any credibility of your argument :-)”
–In short: actually it doesn’t. Not that we are stoning you with hateful words anyway, but to state that doing so destroys the credibility of our rebuttal is entirely illogical.
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“I do not believe in [the evolutionary] theory (Darwinism) as I suspect it could be “the mirror that has been pulled over the world to deceive us from the truth” .”
–If this is so, than who put this metaphorical mirror over the world? It couldn’t have been your god, because why would a being of love want to deceive? This means that there must be a being of greater power and will than your “omni-”ful one, which is paradoxal.
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“The central idea that compels me to believe in Christianity is the simple fact that God is love. Everyone knows that love exists and is true, even though science has difficulty measuring it without describing it in very cold and unromantic terms, or even proving it’s existence :-) ”
–Using “unromantic terms” does not lessen the validity of scientific estimations of what love is and why it psychologically exists. Also, by this logic than, since the Flying Spaghetti Monster is pasta, and everyone knows that pasta exists, than the FSM must exist. This argument is illogical, as it requires one to assume “Since a exists, and b=a(supposedly) than b must exist”, without having proof that b=a; not to mention that one cannot have proof that b=a if b’s very existence is in question.
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“Also, much of science derives from Christian scholars, most scientists historically are Christian, so therefore you cannot ridicule Christians, because you would be ridiculing most of the intelligent people who have proved many things we now know as fact.”
–First of all, the only reason that there are so many historic Christian scholars is that for the majority of the last millennium or two, those who weren’t Christians were killed, brutalized, etc. Further, most of said scholars came to very wrong conclusions because they relied on “what god told them” rather than scrutiny and experimentation. Second, now that we aren’t theocracies(i.e. you won’t be killed for being an atheist), most scientists have no faith. It is reported that at least 93% of members of the National Academy of Sciences do not believe in a god.
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“Personally I cannot believe in the Big Bang theory, because I cannot conceive of there [having once] been Nothing.”
–As has been stated, the Big Bang theory never states that there was once nothing, merely everything concentrated into one point.
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“The concept of Nothing scares me, and also that when we die we disappear into oblivion scares the shite out of me, so I tend to err towards a vague belief that the universe is cyclical; it has always been and is eternal.”
–This is a major logical fallacy: believing something because the alternative scares you. I would prefer a universe in which I had a rather large was of money in my right pocket right now, but that doesn’t mean that that reality exists. Preference has no effect on reality. Also, the word you are thinking of is “cyclic’, as in continuing in a cycle. Cyclical means happening periodically.
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“In which case all scientific “fact” has been created to deceive you into believing that God doesn’t exist.”
–In which case, who put this deception out there? Again, it would have to be a being more powerful than your god in order to go against the wishes of his love.
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“Well Christians believe that it is bad to not believe in God… and to [emphasize] how bad it is, we imagine the most crap place ever, ie Hell. That is how bad your life is when you do not believe in [god]!! Would you agree with that?”
–I would not. I have already covered the whole god=love thing earlier, so I’ll ignore that part. And I do not believe in love as a magical thing. It appears to me in scientific and “unromantic” terms. My life is not as bad as the supposed Christian Hell because of it; if that is what you are trying to say.
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“Also, a belief is merely a theory that hasn’t been [proven].”
–No it isn’t. Faith/belief is defined as being sure that something that can never be proven is correct. A hypothesis is what you’re thinking of, and it doesn’t require religion to form one. A belief can never become a proven theory.
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“No proven fact would exist if no one had [hypothesized] about it, which is what people of faith spend much of their time in prayer doing, we are pondering the bigger questions of why we blooming well exist on this planet,”
–You’re confusing prayer with meditation. Prayer, is “an effort to communicate with God, or to some deity or deities, or another form of spiritual entity, or otherwise, either to offer praise, to make a request, or simply to express one’s thoughts and emotions.” Prayer is an attempt at communication, not contemplation.
“and science is one method of trying to make any sense of the world, religion or faith is another, [who’s] to say that one day science will prove the existence of God?”
–If by “God”, you are referring to the biblical account of the Christian god, he cannot exist for he is self contradictory. If by “God” you mean an arbitrary powerful creator, it won’t happen without pretty big proof. That is, rainbows and faces on toast aren’t going to do it, it will require something like the being himself coming down and saying, to reliable witnesses, “Hey, I exist”. I would like to say that, as of this moment, I am enjoying a nice bowl of beef ramen for those of you who care.
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“As for the Flying Spaghetti Monster, how funny! Any attempted attack on Christianity only [galvanizes] it. To mock it is to show yourself up for what you truly are, a person full of hate and contempt, something that Christianity has evolved people to live without ;-)”
–An attack on Christianity doesn’t galvanize it, no more than mockery of Xenu galvanizes Scientology. If we were to accept that logic, than every time atheists were insulted, it would make the existence of a god less and less likely. For mocking the FSM, are you a person full of hate and contempt? That last phrase, by the way, is the most incorrect assertion you have made thus far. Christians have more than their fair share of hate, just refer to Iron Bess’s post for some examples.
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“Atheists are always welcome in churches, yet it seems that Christians on here are treated the way they were in the days of the Romans. It doesn’t make Atheists seem like a particularly nice bunch, which isn’t true, cos my Dad is one and he’s great! :-)”
When I came out of the disbelief closet, I was not at all accepted in church. I was scorned and regarded as a “lost soul”. Not that I wanted to go to church anyway, but there were always those events that were hosted at churches, or school ceremonies with hints of Christianity in them. As for your comment on Christians, I would not say that having your incorrect arguments pointed out to you is quite as bad as being tortured. Atheists are far more accepting of religious people than they are of us.
And I’m glad you get to see things from both points of view, though I would ask your dad to teach you about logic If I were you
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“Peace”
And also with you.
R’Amen to that dantes_torment.
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@Blackbird…too bad your father didn’t do a better job trying to counter act the indoctrination that your mother obviously did. Maybe you wouldn’t be so afraid of nothing these days.
@dantes_torment
“Let’s play “Demolish the Poor Christian’s Illogical Argument”.”
That’s such a fun game, I just wish there were more challenging levels.
Anyway, your post was awesome.
@El Peatieablo
Yeah, that’s too bad. I keep trying to move up from Beginner to Intermediate, but apparently that level doesn’t exist yet.
The praise is much appreciated.
@ all those who @blackbirded.
I would not call blackbird a fundie by the post. A little off kilter because of a dysfuntional childhood maybe, but that is almost the kind of xian I could handle. Never tried to convert anyone, made only a few glaring oversimplification, and did not deny that pastafarians might be right….Don’t be so harsh you attract more bees with honey. Just my two penny’s
-have a nice day.
Blackbird said:
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I agree. Some posts edge towards flaming and that doesn’t help.
We need to explain in measured tones why what she believes is childish nonsense that she should throw off without another thought.
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She then goes on to the ‘God exists because God is Love’ argument.
I’m a bit busy today, but I have to say that is one of the most feeble arguments ever presented.
Forgetting the fact that re-defining God as being something that does exist (though not in a physical sense I note) somehow makes him exist is silly and foolish.
Did love create the world? Does love send people to hell and burn them for eternity?
What can you possibly mean by an abstract concept creating the physical world?
Surely people fall in love with people they aren’t married to. Why does love forbid adultery and yet encourage it?
etc. so on and so forth.
As with many theist arguments the challenge is to find the few threads of cloth in order to circumscribe the hole!
There is more plausible evidence of evolution than there is of creation.
Besides; Darwin was a religious person. He didn’t publish his work for several years, for fear of being alienated from his fellow Christians.
But he changed his mind.
Christians say what they believe is amazing.
I wish they could experience things even more amazing with added excitment of being based on facts!
Its not your made up mumbojumbo guys. This is the real truth!
WOW!
@ El Peatieablo
Excuse my lack of knowledge about Galileo. It’s hard to keep all the names in my head in order. I could have said it was Edison.
@۞
No, Darwin never changed his mind. He was religious. If he was still alive, he still would be religious.
@ Commodore Angryy
No Problem. There’s really only three names that are all that important anyway (FSM, Bobby Henderson, and Jessica Alba). Oh, your name too, that’s important for tests and stuff. :)
@Etay
Charles Darwin (the famous naturalist) died an agnostic by his own definition and definitely not religious.
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Do you believe in an afterlife? Your choice of words suggests you might not.
@۞
I’m not sure you’re right, ۞. I know he was religious while he was doing his studies. He even studied Anglican theology at a Church of England school. Before he went on the Voyage of the Beagle, Darwin was aiming at becoming a clergyman.
When he was writing the Origin of Species, he remained as a theist; convinced of the existence of God as a First Cause. He was definitely a religious man.
@ Etay
are you saying that Darwin created ID, just under a different name?
He started out quite religious.
Try this:
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin%27s_views_on_religion
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It is a very well cited article.
Read the section on the unedited version of his autobiography.
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Darwin demolishes all the the standard arguments in favour of religion in a few paragraphs.
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He accepts there may be a God by that all the known arguments for him and/or any given religion are false.
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It also shows you that even by modern standards and extra-ordinarily by his own, Darwin is was excellent writer and brilliantly clear thinker.
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It is of great benefit to the world that such a great mind wasn’t wasted on the narrow stiffling world of the church with all its backward thinking. I think he would have found he hated it.
I don’t see your logic, but it is funny reading your idiotic arguements