Posted: Jun 19, 2014 11:13 pm
Let's take a look at this shall we?
Oh this should be good ... especially as Willhud spent time in a seminary training to become a pastor ...
Right, so Magic Man effectively told the two unfortunate stool pigeons "fail to conform and die". Very merciful, I don't think.
Funny how most of the hatred I see comes from religious fundamentalists. Fred Phelps, anyone?
Cue ad hominem attacks and strawman cariactures in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ...
Ah, it's the familiar modus operandi of the ideological stormtrooper for doctrine once more. Demonise all who do not conform. Where have we seen this before, boys and girls?
Oh dear. Strawman caricature time. Quelle surprise.
What we actually think, as opposed to the rampant caricature thereof you've just presented above, is that gay people should be treated as fellow human beings. As opposed to the attitude frequently expressed by assorted religious fundamentalists, who regard gay people as vermin to be exterminated. Randall Terry blew the cover on that one when he openly talked about "executing" gay people. And we all know who was partial to that little practice in the past, don't we?
Yawn.
Actually, if your mythological magic man actually exists, then your magic man is actually the biggest abortionist of them all. Courtesy of the fact that 30% of all human conceptions worldwide end in miscarriage. Including in countries where abortion is banned (e.g., El Salvador). But please, don't let facts get in the way of what is manifestly becoming a rant on your part.
Oh, you actually want people to die lingering, painful deaths, do you? Go and watch someone in the last throes of Huntingdon's Chorea, and see if you think letting that level of suffering persist is a good idea.
Actually, what you'll find we regard as absurd here, is the idea that any magic entity exists, not just your favourite choice. But again, I suspect you won't let facts intrude upon the scratching of this particular itch of yours.
Correction ... was merely asserted to do so in the requisite mythology. Still waiting for something resembling evidence for this, though supernaturalists have a habit of thinking that yet more mythological assertions equals "evidence".
Ah, the familiar demonising of those who do not conform. Yawn.
Actually, atheists are frequently the least hateful people I encounter. Usually, the ones who are gearing up to set fire to people, are people who think their pet mythology equals fact. Oh wait, they did that for real over here in Europe for the best part of 1,000 years. Which is one reason why we tend to be a tad suspicious about self-righteous posturing of the sort we see from religious fundamentalists, who tend to possess that dangerous certainty of their own infallible rectitude leading to some very nasty acts. Such as Arthur Shelton blowing out Larry Hooper's brains with a shotgun, just because Hooper didn't treat mythology as fact. Shelton's serving 45 years for that, by the way. It's this sort of action, and the attutudes underpinning it, that has much to do with our suspicion of supernaturalists.
Oh this is going to be good ...
Ha ha ha ha. Virginia Heffernan is a creationist. Or did you not notice that she wrote an article titled "Why I Am A Creationist" in 2013? What's more, she seems to have a pathological hatred of anyone who has written a peer reviewed paper.
Oh, and I note with interest how your "quote" is littered with ellipses, suggesting large portions of omitted text. This tends to occur frequently in creationist quote mining.
Ha ha ha ha ha. Given her own ideological stance here, I call pot, kettle, black.
From the same source (emphases mine):
Looks like he doesn't agree with you the way you think he does.
Oh, and quite a few of the names in his list of positive role models can be excoriatingly scathing when they are confronted with bad ideas. Perhaps Puglicci didn't notice this because they couched said excoriation in more florid prose.
Moving on ...
I'll let everyone else see the bits of text you omitted in the above quote mines.
Ahem, you appear not to understand an operating principle here, or elsewhere for that matter. Which is, that in the world of science, ideas are disposable entities. And as a corollary, are a free-fire zone for whatever vitriol one may choose to deploy in the direction of those ideas regarded as bad ones. But I'm familiar with the manner in which supernaturalists regard an attack on their cherished ideas as some sort of personal affront.
So you never read any of the pages he devoted to blogging on peer reviewed research? Quelle surprise.
Oh, as for "vulgarity and constant references to human waste and sex acts", try Fred Phelps and Westboro Baptist. Only it seems to be quite a speciality of theirs.
As opposed to thinking you're the product of a cheap conjuring trick with some dirt?
Funny how quite a few of the organisms you dismiss as "just an animal" above, actually have much to teach us about the origins of our own capacity for such traits as ethical thinking. See the primate research of Frans de Waal for some particularly stellar examples.
Frans de Waal would only be the first to disagree with you. Indeed, developing a proper understanding of the unity of the biosphere via inheritance, far from debasing our values, enhances them, because it leads us to welcome diversity and eschew the sort of dangerous, discriminatory attitudes seen, for example, in Henry Morris's creationist screeds, where he peddles the nastily racist "Hamitic races" drivel that was used for years by the KKK to justify lynching people who weren't whiter than white.
Indeed, the mere fact that you regard any comparison with animals as inherently negative, shows how little you understand of the biosphere and its contents. Courtesy of my 35 years' vintage as a keeper of tropical fish, I'm aware of intelligent behaviour in fish species that parallels our own in quite startling ways, such as the parental care of offspring exhibited by numerous Central American Cichlid fishes. Indeed, Dr William T. Innes waxed lyrically on this very subject in a book written way back in 1936. If you bother to use the search facility here, you'll find I've quoted it in full in other posts. And, courtesy of my years spent in entomology, I'm aware of instances of parental care in insects.
But I don't suppose you'll let any of these facts spoil your little excursion into the world of polemics.
Yawn. Try Westboro Baptist if you want those.
Worked really well in Fred Phelps' case, didn't it? Not to mention Tomas de Torquemada.
But then, if you actually study that bit of mythology, you'll quickly learn it's a complete crock. Because, wait for it, one of the assertions contained therein, is that the two characters in question did not possess the capacity for ethical thought when they purportedly "rebelled". They only acquired this after they ate the magic fruit. Which makes a mockery of the entire thesis of the passage in question. Indeed, it reads more like a deliberate set-up job on the part of your magic man, letting the unknowing stool pigeons spring the prepared trap, then punishing them for falling into it.
Oh, you mean like Tomas de Torquemada? Who took a singular delight in exterminating people who didn't conform to religious doctrine?
This farcical apologetic fabrication is falsified wholesale by the existence of people like Tomas de Torquemada.
Doesn't mean that bad legacies ends with the death of those leaving them. Seems like the Phelps clan is committed wholesale to that on their own.
It isn't. it's a blatant fabrication. Plus, the branch of science you're looking for is cognitive neuroscience, not evolutionary biology. Plus, it's rather embarrassing, how much of that suffering has arisen from supernaturalists slaughtering rival supernaturalists.
Translation: I made this shit up and hope no one will notice.
The first two in your list being fictions in any case ...
Correction, they're asserted therein. Assertions do not equal fact.
Oh, you mean as in Isaiah 45:7?
Oh, you mean like all those Catholic priests? I don't recall them "rejecting god".
Funny how "love", in the hands of supernaturalists, usually ends up manifesting itself as "kill all who do not conform". We have the best part of 1,000 years of European history backing this up.
Except that it's all a grand fiction. Because, wait for it, according to the assertions of your mythology, death already existed in the Garden of Eden. Courtesy of Genesis 3:22, viz:
Which surely means that the two characters in question were not destined to live forever unless they also partook of that other bit of magic fruit. Talk about inconsistency.
You see, that's the problem with treating mythology as fact. Eventually, hard reality is going to give your doing so a hefty kick up the backside.
Bob@RealScienceRadio wrote:I wrote this post ten days ago as this thread was being locked (and so I posted it at rsr.org/willhud9 because I couldn't post it here. I'm thankful that when THWOTH reopened the thread later that day, he made this helpful comment: "I would like to remind members contributing to this discussion of the 'attack the post not the poster' principle we aspire to here. Please keep this in mind when posting." That helps a lot, but still, I thought I'd go ahead and post my reply to willhud9 as written. Thanks all.
Oh this should be good ... especially as Willhud spent time in a seminary training to become a pastor ...
Bob@RealScienceRadio wrote:willhud9 wrote:Bob@RealScienceRadio wrote:...virtually the entire creation movement speaks with one voice in answering your question. Our answer is Genesis 3, the Fall. God created a paradise in which Adam and Even and their offspring could have lived forever. But with our rebellion against God, in His mercy, God limited the harm we can do to one another as we grow older and more selfish and bitter, by providing a contingency in the creation. If we turn against God, our bodies will no longer function forever; they will break down, and death will ensue. The fall, the groaning of creation itself, is one of the most fundamental aspects of the creation movement.
^ Is so contradictory it is hard to find out where to begin. ... Where was the mercy in the narrative? He cursed Adam and Eve and exiled them from the garden.
Death. Death was the mercy.
Right, so Magic Man effectively told the two unfortunate stool pigeons "fail to conform and die". Very merciful, I don't think.
Bob@RealScienceRadio wrote:I added the bold emphasis above to highlight the point. The longer that human beings live openly expressing their rebellion of God, as is evident of so many, the more bitter, selfish, and hateful they will become.
Funny how most of the hatred I see comes from religious fundamentalists. Fred Phelps, anyone?
Bob@RealScienceRadio wrote:Consider as an example this RationalSkepticism.org forum.
Cue ad hominem attacks and strawman cariactures in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ...
Bob@RealScienceRadio wrote:I know not to ask for civility, let alone human decency and kindness, from a forum like this
Ah, it's the familiar modus operandi of the ideological stormtrooper for doctrine once more. Demonise all who do not conform. Where have we seen this before, boys and girls?
Bob@RealScienceRadio wrote:that celebrates men sodomizing men
Oh dear. Strawman caricature time. Quelle surprise.
What we actually think, as opposed to the rampant caricature thereof you've just presented above, is that gay people should be treated as fellow human beings. As opposed to the attitude frequently expressed by assorted religious fundamentalists, who regard gay people as vermin to be exterminated. Randall Terry blew the cover on that one when he openly talked about "executing" gay people. And we all know who was partial to that little practice in the past, don't we?
Bob@RealScienceRadio wrote:women dismembering their unborn children
Yawn.
Actually, if your mythological magic man actually exists, then your magic man is actually the biggest abortionist of them all. Courtesy of the fact that 30% of all human conceptions worldwide end in miscarriage. Including in countries where abortion is banned (e.g., El Salvador). But please, don't let facts get in the way of what is manifestly becoming a rant on your part.
Bob@RealScienceRadio wrote:the euthanizing of others
Oh, you actually want people to die lingering, painful deaths, do you? Go and watch someone in the last throes of Huntingdon's Chorea, and see if you think letting that level of suffering persist is a good idea.
Bob@RealScienceRadio wrote:and the mocking of Jesus Christ
Actually, what you'll find we regard as absurd here, is the idea that any magic entity exists, not just your favourite choice. But again, I suspect you won't let facts intrude upon the scratching of this particular itch of yours.
Bob@RealScienceRadio wrote: who died for them.
Correction ... was merely asserted to do so in the requisite mythology. Still waiting for something resembling evidence for this, though supernaturalists have a habit of thinking that yet more mythological assertions equals "evidence".
Bob@RealScienceRadio wrote:But I can use the general mean-spirited demeanor of atheist websites as evidence of the hatefulness that can hardly be contained within those who proclaim godlessness.
Ah, the familiar demonising of those who do not conform. Yawn.
Actually, atheists are frequently the least hateful people I encounter. Usually, the ones who are gearing up to set fire to people, are people who think their pet mythology equals fact. Oh wait, they did that for real over here in Europe for the best part of 1,000 years. Which is one reason why we tend to be a tad suspicious about self-righteous posturing of the sort we see from religious fundamentalists, who tend to possess that dangerous certainty of their own infallible rectitude leading to some very nasty acts. Such as Arthur Shelton blowing out Larry Hooper's brains with a shotgun, just because Hooper didn't treat mythology as fact. Shelton's serving 45 years for that, by the way. It's this sort of action, and the attutudes underpinning it, that has much to do with our suspicion of supernaturalists.
Bob@RealScienceRadio wrote:You probably wouldn't ask, but I'll provide you with a similar assessment from non-creationists.
Oh this is going to be good ...
Bob@RealScienceRadio wrote:The New York Times article Unnatural Science is spot on about the science and evolution sites (like PZ Myers filthy blog). The Times article generally describes (anti-creation) science blogs like from "PZ Myers [who] revels in" a "weird vindictiveness", "religion-baiting", "preoccupied with... name-calling", "incendiary rhetoric that draws bad-faith moral authority from the word 'science'.” The Times writer Virginia Heffernen asks, "Does everyone take for granted now that science sites are where... researchers... go not to interpret data... but to... jeer at... churchgoers?"
Ha ha ha ha. Virginia Heffernan is a creationist. Or did you not notice that she wrote an article titled "Why I Am A Creationist" in 2013? What's more, she seems to have a pathological hatred of anyone who has written a peer reviewed paper.
Oh, and I note with interest how your "quote" is littered with ellipses, suggesting large portions of omitted text. This tends to occur frequently in creationist quote mining.
Bob@RealScienceRadio wrote:And she answers that, "the most visible" of "the science bloggers..." are "charged with bigotry".
Ha ha ha ha ha. Given her own ideological stance here, I call pot, kettle, black.
From the same source (emphases mine):
To begin with, are there positive models to look up to in this endeavor? Absolutely, and here I will name names, though the following list is grossly incomplete, both for reasons of space and because some names just happened not to come to mind at the moment I was typing these words. If you are not listed and you should be, forgive me and let’s amend the problem in the discussion thread. So here we go: Sean Carroll, Dan Dennett, Neil deGrasse Tyson, D.J. Grothe, Tim Farley, Ken Frazier (and pretty much anyone else who writes for Skeptical Inquirer, really), Ron Lindsay, Hemant Mehta, Chris Mooney, Phil Plaitt, Steve Novella (as well as the other Novellas), John Rennie, Genie Scott, Michael Shermer, Carl Zimmer, and many, many more.
Looks like he doesn't agree with you the way you think he does.
Oh, and quite a few of the names in his list of positive role models can be excoriatingly scathing when they are confronted with bad ideas. Perhaps Puglicci didn't notice this because they couched said excoriation in more florid prose.
Moving on ...
Bob@RealScienceRadio wrote:and urged these bloggers to "enroll in the nearest hubris-reducing ten-step program" and suggested that they give "the best possible interpretation of someone else’s argument before you mercilessly dismantle it,"
I'll let everyone else see the bits of text you omitted in the above quote mines.
Bob@RealScienceRadio wrote:and finally, "Engage... your opponents in as civil a tone as you can muster" [which I think was THWOTH's point].
Ahem, you appear not to understand an operating principle here, or elsewhere for that matter. Which is, that in the world of science, ideas are disposable entities. And as a corollary, are a free-fire zone for whatever vitriol one may choose to deploy in the direction of those ideas regarded as bad ones. But I'm familiar with the manner in which supernaturalists regard an attack on their cherished ideas as some sort of personal affront.
Bob@RealScienceRadio wrote:willhud9, just like here at RationalSkepticism.org, PZ Myers mocked me and my RSR friend Will calling us idiots in the title of his blog: Bob Enyart and Will Duffy, partners in idiocy. Like RS and many atheist blogs, Myers' site is filled with vulgarity and constant references to human waste and sex acts.
So you never read any of the pages he devoted to blogging on peer reviewed research? Quelle surprise.
Oh, as for "vulgarity and constant references to human waste and sex acts", try Fred Phelps and Westboro Baptist. Only it seems to be quite a speciality of theirs.
Bob@RealScienceRadio wrote:If you think you're just an animal, you gradually lose sight of your higher virtues;
As opposed to thinking you're the product of a cheap conjuring trick with some dirt?
Funny how quite a few of the organisms you dismiss as "just an animal" above, actually have much to teach us about the origins of our own capacity for such traits as ethical thinking. See the primate research of Frans de Waal for some particularly stellar examples.
Bob@RealScienceRadio wrote:then reproduction and defecation is pretty much all you got.
Frans de Waal would only be the first to disagree with you. Indeed, developing a proper understanding of the unity of the biosphere via inheritance, far from debasing our values, enhances them, because it leads us to welcome diversity and eschew the sort of dangerous, discriminatory attitudes seen, for example, in Henry Morris's creationist screeds, where he peddles the nastily racist "Hamitic races" drivel that was used for years by the KKK to justify lynching people who weren't whiter than white.
Indeed, the mere fact that you regard any comparison with animals as inherently negative, shows how little you understand of the biosphere and its contents. Courtesy of my 35 years' vintage as a keeper of tropical fish, I'm aware of intelligent behaviour in fish species that parallels our own in quite startling ways, such as the parental care of offspring exhibited by numerous Central American Cichlid fishes. Indeed, Dr William T. Innes waxed lyrically on this very subject in a book written way back in 1936. If you bother to use the search facility here, you'll find I've quoted it in full in other posts. And, courtesy of my years spent in entomology, I'm aware of instances of parental care in insects.
But I don't suppose you'll let any of these facts spoil your little excursion into the world of polemics.
Bob@RealScienceRadio wrote:These atheistic science sites, rather than exemplifying diversity, free speech, tolerance, instead, drip with intolerance, anger, bodily fluids, and hatred toward those who disagree.
Yawn. Try Westboro Baptist if you want those.
Bob@RealScienceRadio wrote:So, to state it again willhud9, after man rebelled against God, in His mercy, God ensured that we would die, so that our hatred would be contained
Worked really well in Fred Phelps' case, didn't it? Not to mention Tomas de Torquemada.
But then, if you actually study that bit of mythology, you'll quickly learn it's a complete crock. Because, wait for it, one of the assertions contained therein, is that the two characters in question did not possess the capacity for ethical thought when they purportedly "rebelled". They only acquired this after they ate the magic fruit. Which makes a mockery of the entire thesis of the passage in question. Indeed, it reads more like a deliberate set-up job on the part of your magic man, letting the unknowing stool pigeons spring the prepared trap, then punishing them for falling into it.
Bob@RealScienceRadio wrote: and we would not forever be able to harm one another.
Oh, you mean like Tomas de Torquemada? Who took a singular delight in exterminating people who didn't conform to religious doctrine?
Bob@RealScienceRadio wrote:Whoever asks God to live with Him shall, and whoever does not want to live with God forever shall not, but also, they shall not forever be able to hurt others. (That is the merciful part.)
This farcical apologetic fabrication is falsified wholesale by the existence of people like Tomas de Torquemada.
Doesn't mean that bad legacies ends with the death of those leaving them. Seems like the Phelps clan is committed wholesale to that on their own.
Bob@RealScienceRadio wrote:willhud9 wrote:Bob@RealScienceRadio wrote:(As you may know, Darwinists themselves have struggled to account for the depth and capacity of human suffering which seems to go so far beyond what would be brought about by a mere natural selection for biological survival.)
The bolded bit is an unsubstantiated assertion.
Yes, I didn't source it. I thought that was common knowledge.
It isn't. it's a blatant fabrication. Plus, the branch of science you're looking for is cognitive neuroscience, not evolutionary biology. Plus, it's rather embarrassing, how much of that suffering has arisen from supernaturalists slaughtering rival supernaturalists.
Bob@RealScienceRadio wrote:I don't have time now to dig up sources. Perhaps someone here at RS can post some.
Translation: I made this shit up and hope no one will notice.
Bob@RealScienceRadio wrote:willhud9 wrote:Furthermore the Fall is not a consistent part of your worldview. It is full of holes and contradictions that only the idiom "God works in mysterious ways" can fill and when that line is given the entire worldview simply becomes "when I don't know the answer: God" which begs the question of why hold onto that ideology if logic and rationality poke so many holes into it.
willhud9, in more than 30 years of talking with skeptics and atheists, I don't recall ever answering someone's question about the fall, sin, suffering, or death, with anything like: God works in mysterious ways.
The first two in your list being fictions in any case ...
Bob@RealScienceRadio wrote:To me it seems that these issues are dealt with directly in the Bible
Correction, they're asserted therein. Assertions do not equal fact.
Bob@RealScienceRadio wrote:and the basic understanding of them are straightforward. Those Christians who do struggle with such questions (like Billy Graham after 9/11) are those who follow the ancient pagan Greek concept of fate and believe that all things, good and evil, including kidnappings, tortures, and rape, flow from the mind of God and were eternally decreed by Him.
Oh, you mean as in Isaiah 45:7?
45:7 I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.
Bob@RealScienceRadio wrote:Those Christians, though they may be true Christians, have been influenced by the ancient Greeks, especially by Plato & Aristotle (and later by the hellenized Plotinus), to think that everything is part of an unchangeable plan. So for them, they look at a child rapist, and call it a mystery. The rest of us Christians refer to that as sin. Hatred born of indulging in selfishness that flows from a rejection of God.
Oh, you mean like all those Catholic priests? I don't recall them "rejecting god".
Bob@RealScienceRadio wrote:It seems to me a straightforward matter that love is the answer to the problem of evil, at each of its various levels, and that love requires freedom, because love must be freely given. There are implications of this which might not be evident at first thought, but by the second or third thought, they usually do become evident.
Funny how "love", in the hands of supernaturalists, usually ends up manifesting itself as "kill all who do not conform". We have the best part of 1,000 years of European history backing this up.
Bob@RealScienceRadio wrote:Then, you might not agree with us creationists and our understanding of the fall, but at least you would understand it.
Except that it's all a grand fiction. Because, wait for it, according to the assertions of your mythology, death already existed in the Garden of Eden. Courtesy of Genesis 3:22, viz:
3:22 And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:
Which surely means that the two characters in question were not destined to live forever unless they also partook of that other bit of magic fruit. Talk about inconsistency.
You see, that's the problem with treating mythology as fact. Eventually, hard reality is going to give your doing so a hefty kick up the backside.