dust

September 17th, 2009

Discussion (39)¬

  1. Nuno says:
    September 17, 2009 at 11:56 am

    Nice one 😉

  2. Chiaroscuro says:
    September 17, 2009 at 2:24 pm

    Brilliant! as always

  3. fontor says:
    September 17, 2009 at 3:12 pm

    Wow, that god of theirs certainly is well-protected from the onslaught of reason.

    I wonder where I can get one of those ontological bomb-shelters. I may need one after what I’m planning for International Blasphemy Day.

  4. Bodach says:
    September 17, 2009 at 3:37 pm

    Beautiful. Fontor, when’s I.B.Day, anyway? My invitation must have gotten lost in the mail.

  5. Intelligent Designer says:
    September 17, 2009 at 3:40 pm

    Only very special people* can get God out and pray/suggest to him. For all the ordinary people, he’s not accessible. For them, hollow idolatry and instant induction into Jesus’ circle of coffee morning friends is the consolation prize.

    *People who’ve invested so much time climbing up their own arseholes that they daren’t ever come back out, or admit they’re wrong.

  6. James says:
    September 17, 2009 at 3:54 pm

    What good is prayer in the Muslim faith, after all? Islam is “submission to God” so any entreaties to a deterministic god like Allah would, quite literally, fall on deaf ears.

  7. nina says:
    September 17, 2009 at 5:04 pm

    Nice for them to admit that god can’t stand in the sunshine of logic and reason.

    It’s funny that the religious fundies would have everyone believe that their all powerful, all knowing god must be protected from a minority of the population – the same way that they insist that the minority population of gays/lesbians will also destroy our civilization.

    minorities really have the majority shaking in their boots

  8. wrabbit says:
    September 17, 2009 at 5:15 pm

    an ontological bomb-shelter can only exist apart from reality… so gods only, I’m afraid. And also perfect bananas.

  9. Submoron says:
    September 17, 2009 at 5:37 pm

    Martin Luther had the same idea : Die Vernunft “ist die höchste Hur, die der Teufel hat.” My translation: “Reason is the worst whore of the devil”. He also said that to be a christian you should rip out the eyes of reason. So if those theologians use any form of reason…

  10. Maggs says:
    September 17, 2009 at 8:22 pm

    Sooo, ML knew he was talking cods wallop! I suppose I naively thought he believed it…..

  11. Maggs says:
    September 17, 2009 at 8:22 pm

    Just as well I didn’t want to edit that then, the edit facility has disappeared again.

  12. John Moore says:
    September 17, 2009 at 8:53 pm

    Smiting will always bring folks around….

  13. John Moore says:
    September 17, 2009 at 8:54 pm

    P.s just got a whole cage full of gerbils!!!!!!

  14. JoJo says:
    September 17, 2009 at 10:43 pm

    Don’t smite the gerbils. It’s mean. And don’t put them *there* either. I’m pretty sure that’s a sin.

  15. Intelligent Designer says:
    September 18, 2009 at 12:23 am

    If I understand Armstrong correctly, God is “ineffable, suckers!” So why do god-ites pray? Why claim to have insight into his grand plan? Why speak on his behalf at all? Why, in fact, bother with the whole god thing at all? Clearly (and forgive my shameless recycling of a famous feminist slogan), if god is beyond our ken, then mankind needs a god like a fish needs a bicycle.

  16. Intelligent Designer says:
    September 18, 2009 at 12:23 am

    Hey, edit is back! So there is a god after all…

  17. Poor Richard says:
    September 18, 2009 at 3:10 am

    As Wise Richard said, “Ontology recapitulates scatology.” We could all use a shit shelter, no?

  18. Mr Gronk says:
    September 18, 2009 at 4:39 am

    @Intelligent Designer:
    One definition of prayer is “asking an infallible being to change his mind”

  19. dave says:
    September 18, 2009 at 4:51 am

    “Sooo, ML knew he was talking cods wallop! I suppose I naively thought he believed it…..”

    Who says he didn’t believe it? More likely he did believe it; he just didn’t think he had to justify his belief rationally.

  20. dave says:
    September 18, 2009 at 4:53 am

    “If I understand Armstrong correctly, God is “ineffable, suckers!” So why do god-ites pray?”

    Because religion is all about having your cake and eating it too. Religion always tries to unify two or more contradictory beliefs and then use the “it is a mystery” dodge to avoid charges of self-contradiction.

  21. Daoloth says:
    September 18, 2009 at 6:54 am

    CS Lewis argued that prayer was an attempt to tune in to the deity, rather than an attempt to change her mind. Hmm. Not sure how that applies to petitionary prayer, which has always seemed patently childish to me, but I thought I would add my two-pennorth.
    BTW. JaMoers might enjoy http://imhalal.com/
    Try searching for “Mohammed is a paedophile” or similar

  22. Mr Gronk says:
    September 18, 2009 at 7:01 am

    Daoloth: CS Lewis’s definition would make prayer more like meditation, which would be a huge disappointment in itself to every faith-head begging the sky fairy for a lotto win.

  23. grouchy-one says:
    September 18, 2009 at 7:49 am

    Nice find Daoloth on the imhalal site! It’s a fun challenge to come up with searches that it finds “halal” but generates totally haram results. I tried “Mohammed married a nine year old girl”

  24. azurefrog says:
    September 18, 2009 at 2:28 pm

    @nina – I think religious people all consider themselves a persecuted minority because they are so, um, ‘diverse’. Each little splinter group considers everyone else not to be a TRUE whatever-they-are, and so they are only a tiny minority, despite the fact that a large chunk of the U.S. is made up of these tiny minorities… 😛

  25. Submoron says:
    September 18, 2009 at 5:58 pm

    Ineffable? Well eff him!

  26. kynefski says:
    September 19, 2009 at 12:52 am

    Shouldn’t it be, “You cannot touch him with your logic, NOR your reason…?”

    Still, brilliant.

  27. nina says:
    September 19, 2009 at 7:16 am

    azurefrog

    You’ve hit upon a topic that I am puzzling on – this insistence by True Believers that only they or ones like them or that they approve of are True Whatevers and other people who say that they are whatevers are not.

    What’s interesting is that it’s not just a particular religion, but other areas, like fans of an entertainer.

    On an Elvis forum, I had a woman tell me that I wasn’t a true Elvis fan because I was willing to accept certain claims about Elvis being realistic and likely.

    And it was funny to me that my listening specifically to him for the last 33 years, collecting albums, cds, books and DVDs somehow didn’t mean I was a true fan if I accepted certain claims as fact.

    To me it was very much like people in one splinter group of xtianity claiming members of other splinter groups weren’t true xtians to be the same thing.

    So, funny that it’s not enough to be in the club, now you have to be in the correct chapter.

    and wouldn’t you expect that the oldest chapter – the Catholic Church – is the correct one?

    Do you think this is an American thing – that anything European is rejected and the authority must be local?

    Is that why Mormonism took hold, because it claimed a third testament right in the US?

    Is it that religious American’s can’t cope with the Bible, allegedly the word of god, making no mention of America?

  28. Rosemarie says:
    September 19, 2009 at 5:01 pm

    Daoloth, your mentioning the imhalal website reminded me to check if those Goodies have taken any notice of my e-mail correcting a mistake on their blog page.
    “YOUR in charge of your own actions”. It now reads YOU’RE in charge ……., but did they thank me?

  29. Vince R says:
    September 19, 2009 at 8:31 pm

    Perfect contradiction! It never ceases to amaze me that true believers never seem to spot it!

  30. Tor Hershman says:
    September 20, 2009 at 4:09 am

    Most amusing, indeed.

    Jesus an’ Mo, and others, make an apperance in moi’s wee YouTube parody film
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_m6qC6FCiY0

    Stay on groovin’ safari,
    Tor

  31. Stephen Turner says:
    September 20, 2009 at 7:14 am

    You can all relax: jesusandmo.net is Halal.

  32. grouchy-one says:
    September 20, 2009 at 10:11 am

    HAHAHA J&Mo Halal!! Totally 😀
    Nice one Stephen

  33. Francesc says:
    September 21, 2009 at 1:08 am

    @azurefrog and @nina
    It’s a well known fallacy (“no true scotchman”) and a defensive position. You can’t argue with them that “some” of their leaders weren’t behaving according to their words, because then “they weren’t true “whatever””
    For example, those ministers who abuse childs aren’t true christians.
    I still am wondering if there is a “true” christian 🙂

    Besides, keep in mind that they all are reading the same book and reaching -by the intervention of the same holy spirit- different conclusions, so the only explanaition is that the other sects are not “true christians” and then they can’t receive the “true holy spirit”. And to some extent, there are not two christians who believe the same about their god’s will -yeah, that holy spirit is a bit inefficient

  34. Stephen Turner says:
    September 21, 2009 at 11:34 am

    PZ Myers has pointed out that the world is going to end today.
    http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/09/oh_no_warning_alert_alert_aler.php

    Or rather, the Rapture is today, because the war of Gog and Magog is starting today.
    Or something. Put it in your diary anyway.

  35. MyCatIsGod says:
    September 21, 2009 at 3:36 pm

    @Stephen Turner

    Wow – that’s an amazing find. This graph in particular is just splendid:

    http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/upload/2009/09/oh_no_warning_alert_alert_aler/time_wave.php

    I, for one, am utterly convinced. As a result of such overwhelming evidence I have already put sugar in my tea (twice), started smoking again, and plan on asking out the cute girl who works in my local tabac. No point in putting these things off any more, what with the end of the world and everything…

  36. Gelfling says:
    September 23, 2009 at 9:15 pm

    The world ended two days ago? Shit… I missed it. I guess none of you are out there anymore. But that’s okay, because I’m not here either.

  37. G. Bruno says:
    May 24, 2012 at 6:29 am

    I’m STILL working my way through J&Mo from the very beginning, having stumbled across this site, via Pharma-whatsit, via a comment in ‘ZeroHedge’ a week or so ago. Out of curiosity, I tried to access ‘imhalal.com’ (kudos Daoloth) and got this:

    “In late 2011 I’mHalal had to close its search service due to lack of funding. This page has been set up to keep the memories and great achievements of I’mHalal alive.”

    “Dog works in mischevious ways.” ;=))

  38. Acolyte of Sagan says:
    July 24, 2012 at 11:21 pm

    Never play cards with a man named Doc, nor hide and seek with a guy called God.

  39. Anonymous says:
    February 25, 2018 at 9:46 pm

    RE:Gelfling

    Just like the Egyptians didn’t realize they had drowned in the flood. They just went on keeping records and building buildings and making sculptures etcetera,

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