This idea or bullcrap that you invented is blasphemy and I do believe that you need to stop or you will burn in hell.
-joseph goss
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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
“You atheists put almost as much effort into not believing as religious people do to the opposite”
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Sorry, i got to take issue with that. i put serious effort in to questioning and trying to understand. i suspect most people here do, there’s a big difference between that and simply not believing. it’s how the species progresses, we questioning, we come up with the best answer given the available evidence and we learn. (another huge difference is that i’m happy to change my understanding should the evidence point to it - get that out of a believer!)
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now compare that to faith, which opposes reason on the the grounds that knowledge denies faith. it takes much more effort to to admit ” i don’t know, but i’m going to try and find out” as compared with ” i don’t understand - so it must have been God”
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It’s difficult to maintain sometimes, it’s much easier and comfortable to think of the big guy up there running the show. unfortunately that just doesn’t make it true.
Spider,
Looks like I’m not the only one who can’t sleep tonight. You make a conscientious point here. Sometimes one must generalize for the sake of making a joke. Otherwise, stand up comedy wouldn’t exist. But, I must admit that what turned me away from my Catholic upbringing was the spooky doom and gloom nonsense. I found the ideas of original sin, the ten commandments, mortal sins, sacraments, wafers as the body, wine as the blood, all to be proposterous even at a young age. When I was 10 years old, I came home from school worried that my dad was going to hell because I”d mentioned to my nun/teacher during a lesson on the ten commandments that he worked sometimes on Sundays. That, she said was a violation of a commandment, thereby a mortal sin. Unless that sin was confessed to a priest and forgiven, my dad was sure to burn for eternity as a result of catching up in the office for a couple hours on Sunday afternoons. Even as a kid, I figured that that was kind of retarded. My aversion to religion was bolstered by my encounters with unabashedly narrow-minded Protestants during my college years, especially one particular Promise Keeper http://www.promisekeepers.org/.
It’s good that you constantly question and seek knowledge based on evidence. I’ve been so turned off by religion that calling myself an atheist would actually be paying the whole issue more regard than I think it deserves. I just don’t even care. I also think we can’t really know either way. I also don’t think it’s an issue on which people should feel required to have an opinion. Ask somebody who takes the bus whether they prefer Fords or Chevys. They don’t have a basis for comparision and they have no reason to care.
I’ll leave you with some George Carlin.
# Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told. Think about it, religion has actually convinced people that there’s an INVISIBLE MAN…LIVING IN THE SKY…who watches every thing you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a list of ten special things that he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish where he will send to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry for ever and ever ’til the end of time…but he loves you. [George Carlin, from “You Are All Diseased”]http://atheism.about.com/library/quotes/bl_q_GCarlin.htm
All right. Good talk, see you out there. (Craig Kilbourne from “Old School)
Time to get some f-ing sleep.
BB
@ Brian B
Interesting theory on the dream interpretation. Do you by chance have a reference? A link maybe?
Since self-righteous and smug are essentially interchangeble, your “difference” is a redundancy, a matter of semantics. And “die-hard agnostic” is an oxymoron. How can you be that committed to an idea—which could go either way—you claim to be so open-minded about? Thanks for your observation, we’ll be sure to keep that in mind. ;) No offense intended. Just being the elitist smug assclown.
And thanks for the link but we do have an entire thread dedicated to the south park episode.
RAmen
MJK, Orthodox Pastafarian
Not believing in god is as easy as falling. All you have to do is let go.
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I know it’s not that siimple, but it sounds good. .-)
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OEJ
Good phrase.
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Remember Kids, Just Let Go.
Bit like “Bang the rocks together”.
I Rule All!(hope you like heaven;)
I like your heaven, but those puritans next door are bringing the atmosphere down.:(
Tell them to shut up then :-)
Oh, you think talking would help? I’ve just been flinging flaming meatballs at them.
oops. Sorry ;-)
“You atheists put almost as much effort into not believing as religious people do to the oppositeâ€
Everyone has to have a hobby. I think that coming out of the closet as an atheist, as has been discussed on this site, is healthy. This coming out process takes peer support and a lot of courage. This website provides that. And yes, it takes a lot of effort.
As an American, coming out as an atheist is worse in some families than coming out as a homosexual. Lots of families have queer folk. But they are God-fearin’ queer folk.
“You atheists put almost as much effort into not believing as religious people do to the oppositeâ€
I don’t think one can call individuals who believe in something larger than themselves atheists.
An atheist is an individual who believes in only those things that can be seen, heard, felt or smelled. That’s not to say that those individuals who see god in those things are atheists.
I used to be Anglican, went through Confermation and everything, but Christianity just seemed to be more hypocritical and violent than any other religion. No other religion has started wars as often as Christianity, and it is the first religion sent to convert “heathens” in far away lands and pave the way for so called democracy.
This website is fun because it utilizes science - string theory - and theology to create something new and exciting. Exciting because it makes people talk about beliefs, spawns curiosity and creativity - all enimies of dogma.
Ramen
@neeter: I too was raised Catholic, and found no answers in the church. Not that there are any answers here, but at least we are openly talking about the questions. For all the arguement, there is very little prejudice against any religion here. Anything that seems like it would probably be more acurately pointed at the person not the religion.
I just wanted to separate this from the pile of posts (before it got buried) because It”s one of my favourites:
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@Wangpenis Dec 2nd, 2006 at 10:00 pm
‘Actually, our blind faith is superior to yours.’
RAmen Wangpenis
@neeter
‘This website is fun because it utilizes science - string theory’
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I don’t want to be a ’stick in the mud’ so to speak, but Pastafarians call this Noodle theory.
RAmen and Holiday to you, Pirate neeta.
I’d like to commend this bit of hate mail for its originality… it proclaims that not only are we blaspheming… but it lets us know that we’re also going to hell… some new and different subject matter… why, if someone had mentioned to me earlier that I might go to hell for this… I may not have been so sarcastic, and I would have taken it very seriously… like I am right now…
I find it rather inconsiderate of him not to have provided a hand basket. Seriously.
I don’t how going to hell is a bad thing, thats where we cook the pizzas. You see, as a lifelong Italian (and pirate), I have always known that pasta is indeed divine. I only recently became aware of Unintelligent Design, and Ive made the connection: Italians have pasta, in reference to his Noodley Goodness, and the Catholics want to be cool too, so they stuck their pope in Italy. See? They too acknowlege the power of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. All hail. RAmen
To Mad John Kidd,
I’m glad that you caught the absurdity in me calling myself a die-hard agnostic. I was actually making fun of myself. I’ve been criticized by religious and non-religious friends for not taking a stance either way. I was raised Catholic, and, at an early age was turned off by the whole doom and damnation thing. I really don’t think that religion vs atheism is an issue on which people should feel required to have an opinion. It’s like asking somebody who takes the bus whether they prefer Fords or Chevys. They have no basis for comparison and no reason to care.
Oh, and about the theory of misinterpretation of dreams being an early reason for beliefs in the the supernatural, sorry no link. I remember reading about it in a philosophy class I took in college taught by Dr. Richard Garner. Google him. Atheists would like him. He taught against what he termed “objective prescriptivity”. Basically, a governing force in the universe that determines right from wrong. He’s written a book called Beyond Morality. You can google that too. I’m just giving you guys crap for fun. Don’t take offense. Oh, and thanks for having a sense of humor about your elitist smugness. Oh, and in my opinion, I think that there can be a difference between self-righteousness and smugness. Self-righteous people have more of a tendency to place themselves on a moral pedestal and preach to those who don’t share their views. Smug people, (you guys) tend to laugh off those who don’t share your beliefs and call us retards. Could you send me a link to the South Park thread?
Thanks,
Brian