rest
July 10th, 2013
Hat tip to The Thinking Atheist.
UPDATE: A minute after this was posted, this story appeared in my Twitter Banglalore’s Barwomen Ordered to Wear Decent Clothes.
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J & Mo is the funniest and most consistently thought-provoking cartoon strip on the Net. In a saner world, it would run in a major newspaper.
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Yes, “we” must stop pushing our doctrine onto these free thinking believers. We wouldn’t want to convert them, would we?
So typical – religious hypocrisy and double standards brought on by self-delusion (no matter how sincere).
A great man once said that if they don’t want us to laugh at their beliefs, then they should stop believing in silly things.
But who was that great man?
I just read that link after reading a couple of articles from the Daily Mash. Suffice to say, I thought it was still the Daily Mash!! Beggars belief!!
Surely they could you know, not go in?!?
Scottspeig: Nah, best drinks available in a place with topless barmaids on a Sunday in Ramadan.
Remember that the ruling in Bangalore is a concession to “allow” the women to work in the bars – the police wanted to close them down for daring to have women working for them at all. It’s what passes for “progressive authorities” in such a society.
God help us all (not that he will do)!
More seriously, I’m not too sure that, within reason, I have too much problem with the law defining minimum standards of decency; that’s the case in most countries, though it doesn’t always define what must actually be worn. I don’t even mind that another culture’s idea of what is “decent” is different to our own, because there is an argument to say that our (Western) standards have fallen too far, and anyway, it’s always going to be a judgement call.
Where it falls apart is in treating men and women differently. When the standards become discriminatory, there’s no justification to be had.
I don’t think Barmaid could cover up any more than she already does. I, for one, have never seen anything ‘exposed’
@steeve, I get the impression he’s very shy 😉 !
I think the third panel would make a fine t-shirt.
MarkyWarky,
I’ve been thinking about your post from the last thread where you express frustration that Christians can label your trust in science as faith just like their faith. I think this is merely Christian apologist word gaming. Consider two definitions of faith: definition #1 “faith is believing in things that ain’t so” definition #2 “faith is trust that has been earned”. So if I have faith in the flying spaghetti monster (peace upon his noodle-ness) and you have faith that cars can go 60 MPH then faith = faith and we are the same. But really #1 is not equal to #2 so I have a stupid belief and you have a reasonable one. We should all have faith (#2) in science. It has a brilliant record in improving the human condition. I do science for a living, but am not an expert in most branches that are not my own so take other scientists conclusions on faith. I CAN look into the details. I don’t necessarily HAVE to take it all on faith, but in some cases I might have to study for years before I really understood instead of just having faith. There is so much science out there that it is pure pragmatism to really understand only some of it while taking most on faith. My (#2) faith in science is not in any way equal to Christian (#1) faith in religion.
FKS
As usual with much of humanity
Silly individualistic forms of vanity
What religious or atheist perversion
Demands there alway be a conversion
To the religious or secular insanity.
@fks, thanks for that :). Don’t get me wrong, I know and agree with all of that, but it’s not so much the broader “my faith vs your faith” principal that I struggle with, more the specific scientific/psuedo scientific claims that are made. When someone says there are no transitional fossils, and someone else says yes there are, I can go look. But then we hear “no, that’s not transitional because….” etc etc etc ad infinitum. I guess my question is, as a rational, pragmatic person, at what point is it OK to say that I simply believe them not you, because they’ve been proven trustworthy? Especially as that’ll be taken as blind faith anyway, possibly with further assertions about why I’m wrong to trust.
I’m beginning to agree with the idea that debating based on evidence is pointless, as it gives credence to the other side. I’ve ended up being guilty of asking for evidence to support their statements, while not having enough expertise to provide them with enough when they ask for it, especially as it’s actually impossible to give enough, even if I were an expert, when their goal is not truth but support for a conclusion already drawn.
Comic says it way better than the Thinking Atheist does.
I start to wonder (from the TA post) whether we should have atheist advocacy groups that whine about how persecuted we are (or even have historically been), so that we can exploit our alleged persecution to magically win any argument. We need a word, like “anti-semite” or “racist” or “sexist” that we can fling in people’s faces whenever they express an opinion we don’t like, that makes them automatically in the wrong *and* a terrible person.
This is especially important in politics – there are some amazing interviews with some Scottish politician who was being drummed out, where there had previously been allegations of him being anti-semitic, so the show got a lawyer on to debate him who was really stereotypically jewish, who kept turning the conversation to being about jewish stereotypes, and whenever the politician tried to get back on track the lawyer would effectively go “oh so you don’t want to talk about my jew things, you horrible anti-semite!” The politician literally did not say a single thing about jews, no matter the provocation, but still got roundly depicted as being actively anti-semitic. It was amazing. I want atheists to be able to wield that same dark power.
(That is not seriously what I want.)
Beautiful! How often have I run into the same argument. “If you don’t let me tell you how to live your life, you are not allowing me to practice my religion!” And, these folks actually vote! This is the cause of conservative intransigence and incivility in Washington.
You’ve answered your own question really, Marky, no amount of evidence will satisfy them unless it fits their ideas – which of course it never does, yet they are happy to insist that their nonsense is correct without the need of evidence at all.
There’s no question of having to have faith in science; evidence and the scientific method of investigation trumps faith every time.
@RavenBlack, how about:
“Anti-seculist”, “Anti-humanist”, “anti-pragmatist”, or “thoughtophobe”. Or how about we just ambush a currently innocuous word like “Content”, a little like “Gay” has a different meaning these days, and accuse them of being “Anti-content”?
Another idea; why not adopt a word that’s previously been used as an insult against us, in the same way as gay people have taken “Queer” and Poof” to themselves. “Godless”, “Heathen” and “Damned” all come to mind.
In reality what we’re fighting, even in the non-religious non-interested masses, is the idea that faith is a virtue. I think people who hold that belief but who aren’t religious possibly make my blood boil more than fundies do. Maybe?
This is no longer funny.
This is a deliberate attack on LGBT rights movement, a true hate speach poorly disguised, and it happens in a 21st century.
You may think it is okay to laugh at “pathetic demands” of “religious minorities”, but that is just a short step from putting LGBT minorities in the same position. Demands of any social group are demands of the opressed ones, and therefore a truly mature society should accomodate activists, not laugh at them.
I naively thought we had freedom from persecution as regards belief, but when a group decides it is persecuted and then persecutes someone who has done no persecution, something has gone a*se over tip.
Another gripe I have is so called Christians taking everything they use as ‘Gospel truth’ from the Old Testament which is a History of the Jewish people and nothing whatever to do with what the Christ was supposed to have been preaching. I blame modern education, “We don’t teach you anything, we leave things lying around for you do make up a story from.”
The parodies keep getting better.
Do atheists receive feed-back from the empty void? No? That’s a pity, it’s so helpful…and God even arranges things ahead for a believer even needing to think and ask – not for a miracle, just simple things like a car-park where you want it…
So, try it and see – if it doesn’t happen, your faith (which is belief in the revelation of the true meaning of the written Word) needs ramping up – so you pray more often and give to the Creator of everything the following: ACTS = Adoration; Confession of faults – never to be repeated; Thanksgiving for benefits already received; Supplication, ie personal requests – “Ask and ye will receive”
BUT YOU MUST STOP CALLING YOURELF AN ATHEIST AND LIVING AN UNWORTHY LIFE.
It’s so easy!
john, whatever it is you’re taking – stop! Unless I’ve seriously misunderstood your post I’d have to say that you are talking out of your nether orifice.
For starters, I can’t think of any activist within the LGBT community demanding that non-LGBT people act, dress, eat, or copulate only in ways conforming to the laws of the LGBT community (because there aren’t any, but that’s beside the point), but that’s what your precious religious ‘minorites’ do every single day. As far as I can tell the LGBT community aren’t demanding special privilege or the right to interfere in anybody else’s life, they just want the same rights and protections as everybody else.
Do you honestly not see the difference between the two groups and what they hope to acheive? Here’s a clue; the LGBT folk don’t lust for world domination and superiority over all non LBGTs.
Now, you said Demands of any social group are demands of the opressed ones…. Can you see why that statement is simply wrong?
Social group A demands that social group B cover their heads as the sight of female hair is offensive to them.
Social group B demands that social group A minds their own business.
Which group is the oppressed one?
Or;
Social group A demands that the homosexuality of social group B be criminalised.
Social group B demands that social group A accept homosexuals as equals.
Do you see what I’m getting at?
Marky, I’ve been thinking more about your dilemma regarding the pseudo-science used by Creationists. If a Creationist tries to use science to support their own view one can pretty much assume that the science they use is either plainly wrong, or right but used out of context.
The first thing I’d do if faced with a ‘scientific’ Creationist would be to ask him/her to explain the science they’re attempting to use. The chances are it’s just something they’ve learnt by rote with no idea of what they’re actually saying, in which case I would tell them to go away, learn their own subject properly, and come back when they understand their own argument as there’s no point in a debate otherwise. If, however, they seemed able to discuss the science with ease and I hadn’t the specialist knowledge to counter-argue their point, I’d either ask for their evidence, which wouldn’t be forthcoming because there is no science without evidence (and if they do offer empirical evidence, then they’re playing by our rules and so cannot refuse to consider counter-evidence), or I’d be the one to call a break so I could go and look up the data I’d need.
In science, there’s no shame in saying ‘I don’t know’, as long as it’s followed by ‘but I intend to find out’.
Marky, you might enjoy this; http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/07/10/mormon-evolution/
Jesus and Mo are complaining about a bar they are drinking in during Ramadan being open on Sunday during Ramadamn? And Mo is drinking during Ramadamn as per normal?
That’s the hypocrisy of religion for you, Sam; “Do as I say, not as I do”.
@AoS
I’m reading John’s comment as a Poe – and a damn good one at that. The art of top-flight parody is to make it almost, but not quite, believable.
A Poe is still parody, but is also believable, so it goes into a different realm of humour.
JohnM, you’re probably right, but that one is the sort of false equivalency argument that I’ve heard for real too many times from those who really want us to believe that they are the persecuted ones.
Or maybe I really am losing my sense of humour. If so, mustn’t grumble; it’s served me well for many years so it deserves a break if it needs one 😉
Acolyte, I’m pretty sure John was Poeing you. Could be wrong but it’s pretty obvious that for a group to be oppressed it needs to be a minority in the population, which can hardly be said of the religious. Yet.
I too would like to find a word for the anti-atheists that rolls off the tongue as easily as “homophobe” or “racist”. All I can come up with are things like “anticognitionist” or “antisophist” or “antiempiricist”. We need a Republican to get on board with this. They always nail the best labels, like “pro-life” which has to trump “pro-choice” for emotional appeal, no matter how much of a lie it conceals.
That said, I’m slightly uncomfortable with claiming persecution. In my neck of the woods, and my family, my unbelief seems to be tolerated. Nobody wants to argue with me because they all know damn well that the things they purport to believe are plain silly and they don’t want to be forced to say them out loud. We see lots of persecution of atheists in other parts of the world, but I’m never sure how many of the reports are real, or how common. In Bangladesh, for example, the excuse for the demonstrations may have been to stop atheist bloggers, but the real reason seems to be avoiding prosecution as war criminals. We laugh at the persecuted Christians. My family laughs at stories of persecuted atheists, while smiling indulgently at my rants.
Just got to say, again how much I enjoy the discussion you blokes engage in. Best local in the world.
I think it’s time to introduce Ac’s Law; as a parody must contain ideas more ridiculous than those of the target of the parody; and since religion has shown itself repeatedly to be so ridiculous as to be beyond parody, then it is impossible to perform a successful Poe on religion since whatever it contains will be no different, neither more extreme nor less believable than what we’ve come to expect from religion.
I’m with DH on the persecution issueCertainly it’s rough for atheists in the more extreme fundamentalist parts of the world, but for most of us I wouldn’t consider loud tutting to be persecution exactly. We might be looked down on, even shunned in some communities, but not persecuted in the real sense of the word. At the risk of a Godwin being called, atheists in Nazi Germany were persecuted (I have an extract of one of Hitler’s speeches in a book somewhere where he lists the ‘undesirables’, and atheists are there among the Jews and intellectuals; but that was then, and this is now, so let’s leave the persecution complex to others, shall we?
@ AoS I’m not convinced by your statement concerning persecution of atheists. The penalty for apostasy under Islam is well known, and apostasy would include a display of atheism by anyone born to Muslim parents, would it not?
Religious people are minority indeed in most Western countries today; statistics may vary, but you’d hardly find more than 5% of muslims anywhere in EU. Attacking them because of their right to be offended is just as outrageous as homophobic attacks on similar LGBT rights.
Say, don’t the homophobes attack our LGBT minorities on sex ed issues in exactly same fashion as the xenophobes attack sharia homeschoolers? Don’t Swedish homophobes attack our gender rights activists for “he/she” sexism issue just like islamophobes attack muslem activists for just a mentioning of London-wide Ramadan idea?
Racist and homophobic speech is outlawed for good in most of the modern world, including this forum. In the chat forums that I am moderating myself, I apply exactly the same censorship on any hate speech, even if it is disguised under a thin foil of islamophobic satire.
Democracy is not about freedom of hate speech; it’s about listening to the activists who make the world go round.
John: “Religious people are minority indeed in most Western countries today; statistics may vary, but you’d hardly find more than 5% of muslims anywhere in EU.”
And is Islam the only religion? Religious people are NOT in a minority, unless you leave most religion out of the count.
Okay, John is not doing a Poe? John is serious? John is placing those who want realistic and tolerant sex ed on an equal footing with those who want NO sex ed and the absolute subjugation of women by men? John is placing those who say “death to the infidel and unbeliever” in the same category as those who say “we have a right to our opinion about the existence of God”? It seems both are hate speech. Or maybe only the latter is hate speech and the former is okay. John is either continuing a satire, or has gone around the twist.
John, wasn’t the whole point of the London wide Ramada that EVERYBODY should observe it, on pain of retaliation by fanatics? How can you call opposing that idea “islamophobia”? You’re having us on, right?
Do we have a troll here, folks? Enquiring minds want to know.
Well, I guess john just cleared up the Poe debate. Oh, ye miscreants of little faith 😉
john, what exactly is so hateful about “Oh, give it a rest, will you?”
Now, did you read my piece about false equivalency? Let’s try again, and this time please pay attention. Those campaigning for an end to discriminatation on the grounds of race, sexuality, gender, etc. are merely demanding equal rights with the rest of the populace. They’re not asking that the world dances to their tune; they’re not asking for special dispensations or for rights that are denied to anybody else; they’re not asking that others be forced to adopt their lifestyles; they just want to be treated the same as everybody else. That sounds to me to be a very reasonable request; it’s a failing of humanity in general that they have to ask in the first place.
Religion, however, is forever making demands on others, or interfering with the private lives of anybody not fitting their ideals. They don’t want the same rights as anybody else because they do want the world to dance to their tune. There is absolutely no reason why I shouldn’t eat in front of a Muslim during Ramadam; I don’t share that belief system, it means nothing to me, and while they’re welcome to ask an entire city to fit in with their beliefs, they have no right whatsoever to demand it, nor to expect anybody to conform with them. Besides, never mind the atheist infidels, can you really see the Jewish, the Catholics, the LDS, Hindus, Seikhs, etc. etc. being happy to join in with Ramadam? And when was the last time the Muslim community observed Passover, or Lent, or Diwali? And before you start squealing about Islamophobia, not wanting to obey Islam or join in with its rituals is not being Islamophobic: it’s just being non-Muslim. I don’t do Mass either, but I’m not a Catholophobe; I don’t do Diwali but I’m not an Hindiphobe. I’m just not religious, and nobody has the right to tell me what to do and what not to do based on their -or any – religious principles.
Here’s a deal; when religion stops trying to tell us how to live our lives, we’ll stop ridiculing them. Agreed?
JohnM, I agree that it’s a problem in certain parts of the world, and the atheists there do need our support, but I really don’t think that we in the West should claim persecution here since the vast majority of us are not at risk of anything worse than a bit of name-calling. People are persecuted for various reasons worldwide; to compare what the majority of us atheists face to the true horrors of persecution is an insult to those who genuinely do suffer, and is the worst sort of hyperbole which I’d rather leave to the experts, those poor, persecuted religious believers (whose definition of persecution appears to be ‘not allowed to persecute anyone who is different to us).
Cor blimey, am I really that slow at typing? DH’s post wasn’t there when I started mine! And he said it far better than I…….
That is just too good!!!!
Acolyte, I don’t think I said it better, just different. 🙂 You and I are on the same page, as usual. John doesn’t seem to be in the same book.
Looking at the report from Bangalore, might it be Jesus and Mo are expecting the visit of, no, not Mo(ses) this time, but a few hundred divine avatars?
@@ AoS and DH
Perhaps John’s ability at “Poe-ing” is even better than we suspected, and he has now gone into superlative O/Drive. It’s certainly indistinguishable from the sort of thing someone bent on ‘lying for Jesus’ might decide to write 🙁
By the way, AoS, even if religions were to ever stop telling us how to live our lives, I’m not sure I could bring myself to stop ridiculing them 🙂 I’d be a bit like that Kevin “Bloody” Wilson song – “I’m giving up wanking tomorrow”
European, are you referring to the giant blue CGI version or the original Hindi avatars?
DH, it never ceases to amaze me how people can come out with stuff like John has and expect to be taken seriously, especially when the obvious flaws in their arguments are pointed out clearly and politely (an attiude to trolls that is a credit to the patience of J&M’s commentariat – they all get a chance or two before the gloves come off) with no obvious effect on their thinking. I guess Dr. House was right about reasoning with the religious.
JohnM,you’re right of course, religion will always be ridiculous, but in a world where the religious no longer want to control us all,we could at least afford to be a little less…..strident 😉
DH and AOS what is Poeing please?
Okay, that was a trolling indeed.
I really don’t give a rats ass about either muslem/christian/lgbt activists who make their living from histeriactivism.
Point is, if you expect a fair debate, or if you claim Victory of Mind Over Darkness, don’t silence your opponents. Any kind of opponents. Neither by shaming into silence, nor by stoning to death.
Jobrag, from wiki:
Thanks to the sterling work of such luminaries as Ray Comfort, Ken Ham, Bryan Fischer and their ilk, along with their Islamic Fndamentalist brothers, it has now become virtually impossible to parody religious belief, so any extreme religious views, whether intended as a Poe or not, are doomed to be taken for the real thing. Once upon a time, pulling a sucessful religion-based Poe was something to be proud of, but alas it is now too easy, no matter how ridiculous the Poee tries to be.
John, I hope you noticed that nobody here tried to silence you, but instead merely pointed out the flaws in yor argument and invited further dialogue by asking you questions. But really, if you want to troll here you need to up your game a bit: we’re used to our good friend FreeFox, so if you really want to play with us, that’s the standard you’ll need to acheive.
Joke from Facebook post of one of my Christian fundie relatives:
An atheist was seated next to a little girl on an airplane and he turned
to her and said, “Do you want to talk? Flights go quicker if you strike
up a conversation with your fellow passenger.”
The little girl, who had just started to read her book, replied to the total
stranger, “What would you want to talk about?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said the atheist. “How about why there is no God,
or no Heaven or Hell, or no life after death?” as he smiled smugly.
“Okay,” she said. “Those could be interesting topics but let me ask
you a question first. A horse, a cow, and a deer all eat the same
stuff – grass. Yet a deer excretes little pellets, while a cow turns
out a flat patty, but a horse produces clumps. Why do you suppose that is?”
The atheist, visibly surprised by the little girl’s intelligence,
thinks about it and says, “Hmmm, I have no idea.” To which
the little girl replies, “Do you really feel qualified to discuss
God, Heaven and Hell, or life after death, when you don’t know shit?”
And then she went back to reading her book.
Given that atheists have to be in a minority in most societies, wonder what John’s comment would be about religious people using humour to attack a minority including justifying a child swearing at an adult.
Side comment on AoS and persecution of atheists: Alexander Aan doing two years in Indonesia and Alber Saber (as far as I can find out) doing three in Egypt for atheist comments. Also some of the ‘name calling’ can get pretty vicious in the USA e.g. accusations of treason.
I’ve tried & tried to decipher it and I know I’m going to be sorry that I asked, but WTF is LGBT?
Mahatma Coat. LGBT is an acronym for Lesbian Gay Bi Trans. It’s very common now and tries to include all members of persecuted minority gender identification. I personally think they need to add K for Kink, because those people really do have a hard time too.
john says:
This is a deliberate attack on LGBT rights movement, a true hate speach poorly disguised, and it happens in a 21st century.
You may think it is okay to laugh at “pathetic demands” of “religious minorities”, but that is just a short step from putting LGBT minorities in the same position. Demands of any social group are demands of the opressed ones, and therefore a truly mature society should accomodate activists, not laugh at them.
There is a huge difference however between dicriminate based upon sex sexual orientation, Race or gender and that based upon religion or any other activity- and that is the matter of choice
racism and sexism and homo/transphobia are attacks on innate aspects which cannot be changed
Religion on the other hand is a social choice – so atacks on that are justified -if there is good cause to do so -for example is your ideaology says that jews are evil or it is ok to be a pedophile- which some religions apparently do
the joke supplied by UncoBob
clearly shows a lack of knowledge of ruminant vs non ruminant biology and diet in leaf eating vs grass eating ruminants
perhaps they are just the grass eating ‘kind’ of animal
on the part of the joke’s compiler
but the punch line is surely just as applicable to beleivers as atheists?
@AoS
Oh, dear. By pointing out to our Poe-ista troll, John, that no-one here is trying to shut him up, you seem to have shut him up 🙂 Shame that, I enjoyed watching you and others taking him apart.
@DH
“I personally think they need to add K for Kink, because those people really do have a hard time too.”
Do tell. Have you been caught in flagranti, ‘flogging a dead horse’ – or even just one of those three, so-called, p’versions 🙂 🙂
JohnM, it’s a curious thing about trolls; feed them (outrage is their favoured food) and they keep coming back, but education is anathema to them, so as soon as they realise that they are being taught something rather than being fed – they’re off.
Regarding LGBT, I have also seen this acronym written as LGBTQ (for ‘queer’), but I have to confess that, just as Mahatma did, I spent a long time trying to decipher LGBT; the best I came up with before asking was that it was a sandwich, like a BLT but with added gherkins (that’s ‘pickles’ for the U.S.). To my shame (and this isn’t a joke, so please don’t think I’m taking the piss), for a while I also had no clue what ‘FGM’ referred to, and until I actually saw it written longhand I thought it was a relative of the FSM.
If I imagined for one moment the FSM (blessings be upon hir noodliness) had any connection to FGM, I’d add hir church to the list of all the others I despise. Just now, in the UK, young adolescent girls enjoying their summer holidays but with the misfortune of having Muslim parents, are being shipped off to enjoy a visit with relatives in Africa. You can guess what happens when they arrive – FGM. Yet not one prosecution for this has ever been brought in UK against anyone for permitting this despicable act. Like the rest of Europe, it has truly become a dhimmi nation.
DH thanks for enlightening me. Abbreviations sometimes are opaque to me but this one no longer.
Jobrag – for the ultimate poe, check out the Landover Baptist Church.
A pope was seated next to a little girl on an aeroplane and he turned
to her and said, “Do you want to talk? Flights go quicker if you strike
up a conversation with your fellow passenger.”
The little girl, who had just started to read her book, replied to the total
stranger, “What would you want to talk about?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said the pope. “How about why there is a God,
and a Heaven and Hell, and life after death?” as he smiled smugly.
“Okay,” she said. “Those could be interesting topics but let me ask
you a question first. A horse, a cow, and a deer all eat the same
stuff – grass. Yet a deer excretes little pellets, while a cow turns
out a flat patty, but a horse produces clumps. Why do you suppose that is?”
The pope, visibly surprised by the little girl’s intelligence,
thinks about it and says, “Hmmm, I have no idea.” To which
the little girl replies, “Do you really feel qualified to discuss
God, Heaven and Hell, or life after death, when you don’t know shit?”
And then she went back to reading her book.
###################################
A much better version than UncaBob’s.
It is reasonable, after all to expect a religious fanatic with education in little but his particular schism of fairy-tales to know very little about the biology and physiology of mammalian digestive systems but any random atheist could be a practising vet. Unlikely to be, but there are many hundreds who are.
Second reason why my version is more apt: “atheists” do not, in general and as a rule, strike up conversations with random little girls with the sole intent of scaring them about death. Religious lack-wits do this all the time. Indeed, “atheists” are less likely to bring up the subject of ghostly big daddies in the clouds than they are to discuss “Green Lantern” comics and their significance to the mortal experience. Religious fun-dies, on the other hand, are demented on the subject of their spooky big daddies and must bring them up at every opportunity. One of the first questions a fanatic wishes to know about a human being is which spooky daddy in the sky he votes for.
And, no, I see nothing wrong with the scenario of a little girl being on the Pope’s aeroplane, for obvious reasons.
Note: I do not claim my version as funnier. That’s a matter of taste and I expect the deluded among us to find it exceedingly distasteful. I should also mention that I thought of using “highly respected imam” instead of “pope” but I like my extremities attached and unsinged.
Sorry, UncoBob. I can spell, and read, I just don’t type very well and I wasn’t expecting my corruption of your ‘nym to pass the spell-checker so I ignored the warning.
A lifetime rational, fully adult human being, who was always a Real Man, who allowed his wife to have an opinion (and who admitted he was wrong when she could show him it was so) dies. To his utter astonishment he finds something like himself standing before some gates attached to a wall in a cloudscape being interviewed by a bearded gate-keeper. He is surprised to find *anything*, he expected it to be “lights-out”. This, whatever came next, was a bonus.
He looks straight at the seemingly human figure who has taken upon itself to decide the unbeliever’s fate.
“I *still* don’t believe.” He states firmly. “But I’m beginning to be open to being persuaded should you be able to show me evidence that this isn’t one last fading dream before lights-out.”
The gate-keeper is slightly put off by this attitude. He expected awe, shock, reverence and pleading for mercy. He had the power to condemn this arrogant upstart to eternal pain and misery or to offer him the joys of eternal salvation, a little recognition of the gate-keeper’s potency would have been appropriate, in his opinion and in his long experience. Few of the dead ever questioned his very existence. Even fewer dared him to exercise his power of choice.
What the gate-keeper had yet to consider was that the choice was meaningless to a being capable of truly adult thinking. Pain is just a sensation and several million gigayears of it would render it impotent and free of interest and horror. And even the most wondrous “heaven” would be rather a bore after ten to the fiftieth power millennia. Indeed, a fully adult human mind ripped from a once-living fully-adult human being would fear *nothing* when offered the prospect of unending time.
Hell is a pitiful joke to a true immortal with all his marbles intact. Only children and the weakest of minds would fear it. *Boredom* would be far more of a punishment, so any celestial party full of the righteous had better be endlessly fascinating and ever-mutating to be a juicier bet than any Hell.
The Real Man laughed at the gate-keeper and its pitiful threats.
“I’m still not sure you’re in any way ‘real’ but I’ll play the game, for now. After all, that’s what I did when I was alive; survive in a complex cosmos using the rules offered until entropy smacked me down.” He sneered at the human-shaped alien figure. “If I can do that in a place full of toothache, back pain, cancer, roaches and politicians, I’m sure I’ll manage up, or down, here. So bring it on.”
The confused gate-keeper decided to refer this one to a boss.
“Oh,” adds the adult mind in a tone that brooked no dispute, “the first thing you are going to do, pal, is take me to her.”
#######################
Gezza says:
July 10, 2013 at 11:44 pm
Do atheists receive feed-back from the empty void?
yes as much as beleivers do in fact
as a non believer I find things quite often happen which i can perceive as favourable
or do you really beleive that your imaginary fantasy father figure moves car parks around for your personal benefit??
better to revieve nothing from an empty void
than nothing from an empty mind
I have an even shorter reply for Gezza
three words the last of which is ‘yourself’
A pope was seated next to a little girl on an aeroplane and he turned
to her and said, “Do you want to talk? Flights go quicker if you strike
up a conversation with your fellow passenger.”
The little girl, who had just started to read her book, replied to the total
stranger, “What would you want to talk about?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said the pope. “How about why there is a God,
and a Heaven and Hell, and life after death?” as he smiled smugly.
dont know about you but if I was seated on a plane and a person suffering from delusions about ‘god’ started asking if I believe in ‘life after death’ I would check their shoes and /or call security
This joke about the atheist on the plane has made me want to become a pilot. I can imagine flying a plane-full of priests to Rome and, partway through the flight, put the plane into a dive, switch on the tannoy, and start singing Nearer My God To Thee, just to see how many of them get excited at the thought of meeting their maker and how many get a little stressed.
But then again, I’d actually have to crash the plane, otherwise the priests wouldn’t believe it was a joke and claim their survival a miracle. Heh, I think I’ve found a cause worth dying for – crappy practical jokes 🙂
Unco Bob, re Side comment on AoS and persecution of atheists: Alexander Aan doing two years in Indonesia and Alber Saber (as far as I can find out) doing three in Egypt for atheist comments. Also some of the ‘name calling’ can get pretty vicious in the USA e.g. accusations of treason.
I did acknowledge that in some places persecution is exactly what atheists face. What I don’t like is the idea of those of us in the West, who are at worse prone to being shouted at, called names, etc. but at are no real risk of serious harm or death for our non-belief, claiming persecution. It lessens the impact of the word when using it to describe genuine persecution if it is also used to describe what is usually no more than religious bullying, and it also serves to make us sound as whiny and hyperbolic as the religious.
Hypatia Alexandria, that’s so funny. When I read Gezza’s post I took him to be one of us, explaining the irrational mind set of the believers. Now i don’t know whether he was being sarcastic or sincere. If he was sincere, I second your motion. But it’s hard to believe he was. Another Poe?
AOSThanks for that, it also explains the Nobel Peace Prize.
sincere or sarcastic; there is nothing in Gezza’s message to suggest anything other than sincerity- so I replied accordingly
Gazza tells us we must stop living an unworthy life as non-believers.
How dare he. How dare any of them. They waste their entire lives begging favours from an imaginary big daddy in the clouds and they think that is “worthy”? They dream up stupid rules like female hair is somehow haram whereas the identical compound grown from something with a broken sex chromosome is magically okay and praiseworthy. Rules like you must only wash with your left hand, even if it’s broken. That females can’t run from a burning building without dressing completely in black bin-bags.
They waste endless treasure, time, effort and manpower building giant edifices proclaiming their idiocy to future generations while hospitals are starved of resources in many countries.
While we dream of stars. We dream of endless scions of Man falling through the trans-finite gulf to make the stars into a human galaxy. We dream of worlds beyond counting feeling the tread of the daughters of Earth, of skies of many colours being loved and appreciated by the eyes of the Children of Man. Real Men see Earth as the cradle of a vast and endless joyful exploration of our home, the universe. Those who childishly cling to their small, petty, trivial daddy daemons see Earth only as a grave, cramped, restricted and filled with eternal horrors and terrors and pain.
The only worthy life is to mock, deride and otherwise ignore the futile, childish squabblings of the fairy-tale devotees – as we would those who worshipped the characters in Marvel (TM) comics – and to try to educate them enough so they can become fully adult human beings.
Real Men lead worthy lives without need of beardy ghosty daddies.
Real Men build Arecibo’s and Glasgow Royal Infirmary’s as testament to our powers, our compassion and our humanity.
Cathedrals are for loser children.
WetWednesdayInBognor, that was quite beautiful. Thank you.
LostJohn says
“finds something like himself standing before some gates attached to a wall in a cloudscape being interviewed by a bearded
gate-keeper”
Made me think of this, which brought a smile to me when a friend posted it.
https://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn2/q71/954629_567027190003431_111275138_n.jpg
@Acolyte of Sagan, @Darwin Harmless:
Seriously, this website is a rather wrong forum for any intellectual debate. And that is not so much because of an inconvenient form (comments under a comic strip are meant to display short trollings) — but more because of the restrictive rules of this forum.
You may think that a few commonplace taboos cannot hurt small intellectual discussion – well you would be wrong here.
See, I have a sobering experience of living under a tyrant regime. While there are not so many taboos – mainly one should avoid criticizing the regime itself, and then avoid criticism towards dominant ideology – these taboos quickly prove to be omnipresent.
Wanna discuss any topic from sociology field? Whoops, you’ve just made a thought crime of indirectly disagreeing with some Lenin’s dogma. Psychology perhaps? Wrong again, you are indirectly calling our Dear Leader a not-that-perfect-dude, which is a Bad Thing to allege. Human rights then? Only our greatest-ever-empire ensures best compliance to the Human Rights on this planet, period. Biology? Nope, wrong again – biology has something to do with the DNA and the genetics, and the genetics were Thing of the Nazis, and that makes you a sympathizer of our enemies.
So my point is: you cannot have a truly free intellectual discussion as long as you keep your right to label your opponent a “royalist”… no, that was a wrong epoch, heretics are called “bourgeoisie ” now… wait, wrong epoch again, it should be “infidel”… sorry, got it, this time it’s “homophobe” ! Yeah, as long as you can label your opponents something, you are not open for a debate.
Not that I consider myself a homophobe (or any other phobe), nor am I planning any phobic thought crime – but the very presence of any sacred dogmas makes any debate a total waste of time.
There’s a game called “say anything and I’ll prove you hate gays”. Its rather easy to win 🙂
Artist,
Brilliant! As always your drawings say so much in a short space.
I have had a question for the god botherers for decades that none of them even try to answer.
If this god is so all knowing, in that he (always a he) knows what will happen on the very spot where I am currently sitting while I type this in say, 10,000 years from now. (Said god being a critter that knows ALL that ever was, is, and will be). My question is; then this same god MUST have known BEFORE he planted that tree that Adam and Eve would eat the fruits of said tree.
IF this god didn’t know (the free will BS excuse), then that god is not “all knowing”. Or, IF this god critter DID know and planted it anyway, then that god is a nasty, cruel son of a bitch.
Any thoughts readers?
Curious minds would like an answer.
IanB says:
July 14, 2013 at 7:20 pm LostJohn says
“finds something like himself standing before some gates attached to a wall in a cloudscape being interviewed by a bearded
gate-keeper”
Made me think of this, which brought a smile to me when a friend posted it.
http://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn2/q71/954629_567027190003431_111275138_n.jpg
Of course, everyone with a whit of wits would recognise Jesse Carpenter in an Odin costume playing a joke on the poor blighters.
I wonder if souls *can* kark themselves?
Or would that be the sort of impolite detail that one does not ask of the “experts”?
There are fairy tales of the dead being given food and drink, and certainly all the gods, godlings and other daemons seem to need to eat regularly (“sacrifice” is feeding the local boss daemon) so, unless they have infinitely expanding waistlines – which would explain how they get to be everywhere at once – they *must* have movements. Which neatly and logically answers the question.
Me, a theologian, who knew?
John, I too have spent some time in a tyrannical country. It was rather easy to have a debate, provided one didn’t gather a huge crowd to observe the discussion. It seems to me that you are saying we can’t have a debate as soon as we give the person we are talking to any label that says we disagree with them or dislike them. What about labels they apply themselves. Can I debate with a Catholic? Can I call a Catholic a Catholic in that debate? Does this somehow lessen my ability to debate with them, or shut down the discussion. If a person defines themself as a homophobe, either directly or by spouting homophobic statements, I fail to see how it shuts down the discussion to give them the label.
There is nothing “sacred dogma” like about recognizing homophobia and calling it what it is. If I call somebody a homophobe, it isn’t with the intention of silencing that person, or of shutting down discussion. It’s with the intention of pointing out the nature of their argument. Actually, I try to avoid labelling a person a homophobe. What I prefer is to point out that their statements sound homophobic.
Your statement simply sound stupid. So, what exactly are you trying to say to us?
“Seriously, this website is a rather wrong forum for any intellectual debate. And that is not so much because of an inconvenient form (comments under a comic strip are meant to display short trollings) — but more because of the restrictive rules of this forum.”
Inconvenient forum? I find this forum very convenient. Restrictive rules? “This comments section is provided as a safe place for readers of J&M to talk, to exchange jokes and ideas, to engage in profound philosophical discussion, and to ridicule the sincerely held beliefs of millions. As such, comments of a racist, sexist or homophobic nature will not be tolerated.”
If you find these few rules restrictive, I invite you to fuck right off. We all enjoy the discussion here. If you don’t, there’s the egress.
John, I can’t quite make head nor tail of that post; the only thing I can gather is that you want to talk about something that appears on Author’s ‘banned list’. Well, I think you’ll find that as long as you can put together a rational argument for whatever it is that’s on your mind we will give it a fair hearing.
On the other hand, if you are just trolling then you’re falling flat on your face; it takes a much better level of trolling to impress us. Which reminds me, you said;
Is that an internet law that the rest of us missed, or just you talking out of your posterior?
Charlie, the short answer to your conundrum is ‘it didn’t happen’, but of course no religidiot will admit that, so instead they do what they always do when faced with logical inconsistancies in their books, namely fall back on ‘the will of God’. Please don’t hold out for a logical answer from them because it will never be forthcoming; they will always praise their gods for the good and blame us imperfect humans for the bad. How they deal with the inevitable cognitive dissonance that this kind of thinking has to cause is beyond the ken of this old git – sorry. 😉
Jeez, DH, you and I are going to have to stop meeting like this; people may talk 🙂
Still, this cross posting proves that at least you and I from among the commentariat aren’t sock-puppets, as was suggested fairly recently.
It’s just occured to me, john sounds like a libertarian since he so clearly sees the forum rules on civility to be a breach of his right to freedom of speech.
john:
A ban on racist, sexist and homophobic posts is in no sense ‘sacred dogma’; it is a recognition that these are symptoms of repressive, indeed tyrannical thinking, and they are what turns any intellectual debate into ‘a waste of time’. Keeping them off the table does not restrict debate, any more than a ban on punching your opponents restricts a game of football. It merely clears a space to allow meaningful debate to happen.
Your analogy suggests that accusations of homophobia or racism are used to stifle disagreement. I have never seen any examples of this on J&M, and Author, so far from being a tyrant, seems to be a remarkably permissive and benevolent host; there is no ‘regime’ to criticise. Arguing with the boilerplate comment rules, which are pretty much standard on any civilised forum, only confirms you have nothing worthwhile to say about the content of the cartoon and comments.
comments under a comic strip are meant to display short trollings
Not here they aren’t, and I join DH in cordially inviting you to either contribute some non-trolling comments, or to fuck off in good order.
Author, Jebus could also have refused to tip the barmaid in the second tile:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2009/01/30/dont-serve-the-christians-on-a-sunday/
….or at the very least some trolling comments of a better standard than your attempts so far.
Mike, that’s just the kind of double standards we’ve come to expect from them. For those too idle to follow Mike’s link; a group of churchgoers went into a diner to eat after Sunday service, but told the waitress upfront that they weren’t going to tip her as they didn’t believe in people working on Sundays.
@AoS
I, too, have seen the acronym LGBTQ. The acronym was used to describe a group of young people (children and adolescents), with the ‘Q’ standing for ‘questioning.’
@RavenBlack & @MarkyWarky
I do not live in a part of the world where atheists are subject to persecution, so I hope and expect that I will seldom have the need to use nomenclature that refers to people who persecute atheists, but I would call such people religious supremacists, anti-rationalists, anti-secularists, or anti-free-thinkers.
Floridakitesurfer – I prefer to say that theists have faith in Gods but rational people have confidence in science based on evidence. It avoids semantic confusion.
There’s a game called “say anything and I’ll prove you hate gays”. Its rather easy to win
really ??
how about the statement:
“gays are fantastic and cool”
I challenge you to prove hatred of gays from that
When I was listening to the radio recently, I heard that one of Britain’s main broadcasters was set to air the Muslim call to prayer live every morning during the month of Ramadan. I didn’t catch the whole news program segment about this. Did the broadcaster follow through on this plan? If so, how have people reacted to it?
For an article touching on Christian religious supremacism, see http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2013/jul/04/pussy-riot-punk-prayer-review
When a friend and I were having a conversation about religious supremacism, we tried to think of a major religion that does not have any followers who are supremacists. She says she has never heard of Buddhist supremacists. I haven’t, either. Have you?
By the way, if you can read the fine print on the image of my avatar, you might find it an odd choice for a free-thinker. As a former Latin student, I prefer the other motto of the USA (e pluribus unum). However, the motto on the USA’s penny reminds me of a sign I once saw in a shop. It read, “In God we trust; all others pay cash.”
@Hypatia Alexandria
If you say, “gays are fantastic and cool,” an accomplished opponent in the “say anything and I’ll prove you hate gays” game can reply that you are only saying it out of envy, and that envy is a form of hate, so you hate gays 😉 .
On a more serious note, it is sad but true that there are some people who have an amazing ability to put a negative spin on anything.
“You’re only saying that because…” is not proof of anything, it’s a personal opinion based on a bias toward a pre-supposed conclusion.
“Saying “gays are fantastic and cool” stereotypes them as a homogeneous group, denying the existence of individual LGBTQ people who deviate from your subjective notions of what it means to be ‘fantastic’ and/or ‘cool’. “To err is human”, and by refusing to acknowledge the existence of gays who do not live up to your arbitrary standards of excellence, you patronise homosexuals as a group, depriving them of their agency, ‘othering’ them and positioning them as non-human. This reinforces the all-too-common ‘us/them’ binary and leaves you ultimately complicit in the perpetuation of negative and harmful behaviour towards the LGBTQ community.”
How did I do?
You did bloody well, Dalai Llama.
How about ‘my feelings about gay people are no different to those of any other group of people; I like the ones I like, dislike the ones I don’t, and have no feelings either way about people I know nothing about, though I do tend to give the benefit of the doubt until given reason not to.
Acolyte, your normally high standard of punctuation seem to be slipping – on this page alone you have omitted not only a closing bracket, but now also an end quote. Is your hand still hurting?
@tcw
It would appear there are Buddhist supremacists operating in Myanmar just now, if Al Jazeera news reporting is to be believed.
Perhaps one might look either to Sufis or to Jainists if we are truly on a search for non-supremacist religions.
hotrats, yes, like hell sometimes, but a little less every day. Thanks for asking.
Just come across this video of a remarkable little boy over at Pharyngula. Please take a couple of minutes to watch it.
Gee wizz, why do you folks get all the trolls while I am on holidays and unable to enjoy the sport?
To catch up in brief:
John – you talk rubbish.
LGBT – gets longer every year as we try to become more inclusive. It usually has an ‘i’ for intersex on the end and I have seen it written as LGBTTIQQ before. Prizes will be given for correct unravelling.
Don’t know whether it counts as ‘supremicy’ but definitely religious/ethnic persecution from Buddhists in Maynmar and, until recently, in Sri Lanka.
WetWedInBognor: very nice.
Mary2 ,welcome back, hope you had a good-un 🙂
Well, several of us have composed paragraph upon paragraph in response to john, then you come along and say everything we were trying to say with “John – you talk rubbish”.
Love you, you genius.
Acolyte, I’m always suspicious of political statements coming from children. In this case, his words almost certainly parrot the opinion of adults. I suppose it’s possible that the kid could be a social and philosophical genius, and he does claim to be using his own brain and doing his own research, but I rather doubt it.
This reminds me of children speaking out against abortion, or spouting concerns about the environment. You just know that some adult is using the kid. Can’t say I like it much, even when the child is saying things I agree with.
AoS, I must agree with DH about the translation. I think, here, we can use the proverb : “?A beau mentir qui vient de loin?”. In English, I think it look like: “long ways, long lies”. Since we don’t know the language used in the video, it can say what ever the translator wan it to be.
I have no idea where the questions mark are coming from in my last post. It should read :”A beau mentir qui vient de loin”.
AoS, bonus of arriving late to the party – all the hard work and setting up has already been done. All that was left for me to do was to swan in and pick up a drink.
Thanks for going easy on the UPOTWA. Must have been a late night when I last posted. I am sure I spelt ‘supremacy’ three different ways before submitting – looked at what I had typed this morning and oops.
I was a little suspicious at first, but having watched the video through several times, – and speaking as one who has a lot of experience with children, it’s obviious to me that he’s certainly sincere about what he’s saying, and that he isn’t simply reciting lines learned by rote; he’s too animated and too fluent for a 12-year old trying to remember lines. Then there’s the chap stood to the left of the picture half face-palming himself to death when the subtitles suggest the boy’s criticising the treatment of women. And there are the youtube comments, where several commentors who say they speak Arabic confirm that the translation is correct .
So either he’s another Malala; young, intelligent, and the first generation of his people to have access to the internet, and therefore all the knowledge of the world at his fingertips, and brave enough to speak out against what he sees as wrong: or he’s just a very talented actor. If we have any Arabic speakers here, would you mind taking a peek at the video I linked to above, please? I’d at least like to know if my ability to judge character has waned, or if my faith in human nature is justified after all. Thanks. 🙂
Mary2, what type of person would I be to issue a potwa to somebody just returned from their hols? I mean, saviour on a cycle, when I get back from my hols (or rather, used to get back, things aren’t so wild nowadays except in memories 😉 ) basic human functions take a week to catch up.
And I really did love “John, you talk rubbish”. As we say over here, ’nuff said.
I am from Bangalore and I am ashamed. Happy that I live in Canada now.
Laexis, are there very many people back in Bangalore who are unhappy with the situation? Or are you an exception? We only hear about the crazies.
AoS, I think you make a good point. Some kids are very clever and aware of the world around them. Having access to Internet as a source of information can broaden the view of a person.
Further to the the young chap in the video; he does seem to have an instinct for spotting rational, common-sense analysis, and building a world-view around that. Wherever the insights come from, he marshalls them with remarkable sincerity and sympathy. He is also smart enough not to have been co-opted by the parties of religion.
No doubt his friends are embarrased when he presents a stark indictment of the entrenched medieval sexism which still prevails in the East*, but he has been able to fish the central and unarguable truth of the issue from a sea of conflicting opinions and assumptions, against the tide of culture (I would love to add ‘with the shining hook of reason’, but that would be to stretch the metaphor to bursting).
He seems to have learned ‘too much too soon’ about the world at large. But I would suggest that all this needs is a happy facility for recognising opinions that are logically and politically irrefutable, and commiting them to memory – a rare skill, but not too hard to cultivate.
If only politicians would show similar maturity – but then, that would necessitate a comparable commitment to reason and intellectual honesty; and no-one’s going to risk that, when history shows that all you have to do to guarantee votes is to passionately reiterate the prejudices of the mob you wish to represent.
* (as opposed to the slick, modern sexism that prevails in the West)
@Darwin Harmless: No. The Bangaloreans are groovy people who welcomed the Brits for overthrowing a Mughal Sultanate and bringing us Beer, pubs, fish-and-chips, boarding schools and parks with bandstands. This new wave of conservative cover-up that the rest of the country is going through has started to invade Bangalore, driving the groovy, multi-cultural, liberal middle-class to the West. The majority are being subjected to the laws of a crazy few. I myself was a bit surprised, as so far we seemed to be holding off this ridiculous affectation that is taking over the country, but I guess a little haven in the hills can only hold off for so long. I am watching from Canada as religion is destroying the once high and hippy country.