Consider this speech by Richard Henry Pratt. Explain how such attitudes could have been prevalent in a previous era of American history, yet completely socially unacceptable today. Are we much smarter than those people back them, or is there some other explanation for the disgust that most people would feel towards this kind of attitude?
Or are we so far removed from this perspective??
“We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century — the blindness about which posterity will ask, ‘But how could they have thought that?’ — lies where we have never suspected it.”-- C. S. Lewis.
243 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 243 of 243Crude,
Your comments remind me of these lines from T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets:
O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark,
The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant,
The captains, merchant bankers, eminent men of letters,
The generous patrons of art, the statesmen and the rulers,
Distinguished civil servants, chairmen of many committees,
Industrial lords and petty contractors, all go into the dark,
And dark the Sun and Moon, and the Almanach de Gotha
And the Stock Exchange Gazette, the Directory of Directors,
And cold the sense and lost the motive of action.
And we all go with them, into the silent funeral,
Nobody's funeral, for there is no one to bury.
This is, of course, early on in the poem (in East Coker). Such utter despair has been buried in a blaze of (Christian) optimism by the time we get to Little Gidding:
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
By the way, a close reading of Four Quartets causes me to speculate that Eliot may have been a universalist (as seen in the lines I quoted above).
some_fellow_who_did_wear-out_his_welcome_yet_worries_that_others_may_wear-out_a_keyboard: "As for the political warfare conversation between Bob and Ilion (well, mostly Ilion - Bob stays out of these aside from asides) ..."
What is it with this lying fool, that he simply must lie about me, even in such a transparent manner?
Besides, which, B.Prokop, he's accusing you of being a "troll"!
Bob,
Yep. The 'progress' talk is an obvious joke beyond the entirely subjective and fleeting, for a materialist. Real progress, in principle, is intellectually available to the non-materialists.
And Linton knows this, as does Skep. Which is why, you'll notice, Linton has no reply to it other than to whimper and quiver, trying to find an effective insult (oops, he can't), and repeat a decayed Saganism. 'A-a-at least I'll be star stuff!' The man will be dog shit, the nails in a rapist's fingers, and - no doubt most terrifying - the pages in a Bible, long before he has even the hope of becoming, temporarily, his copy-pasted dream: an inconsequential part of a radioactive fireball.
Behold, import and transcendence on the materialist worldview.
Ilion,
What is it with this lying fool, that he simply must lie about me, even in such a transparent manner?
Finally busted the - key, eh? Nothing left but underscores?
And what "lie" are you babbling about now? You two were engaged in a political conversation - more you than Bob.
Besides, which, B.Prokop, he's accusing you of being a "troll"!
No, I'm "accusing" Bob of generally avoiding political conversation, save for extraordinarily brief comments. Ask Bob himself is he avoids it - he's told me as much, directly. At best he makes very brief political comments nowadays. Neither is 'trolling'.
By the way, Ilion: 2 + 2 = 4, water is wet, and materialism is both wrong and sub-intellectual. I say these things because you're so wrapped up in trying to pick petty, foppish fights with me, I think it's an open question that you may disagree with those too. Here, I'll even start you off:
*ahem*
He-who-does-not-comprehend-the-truth-behind-the-plus-sign-on-his-keyboard-or-who-willfully-ignores-what-he-knows-is-true-about-mathematics-because-of-his-wicked-and-foul-nature: 2 + 2 = 4.
A certain intellectually dishonest figure has descended further into the abyss of willful deception - as all of his like inevitably do - and now does so in the guise of "mathematics". As the fool knows - and which all and sundry are capable of verifying for thine own selves, if they wish to revel in the mistake he-who-shall-not-be-named-I-mean-you-clearly-know-who-I'm-talking-about-but-indulge-me-here-this-is-my-thing - 2 + 2 = 10 in base 4, which he so obviously meant to calculate in. And yet I bet he shall deny this when found out in his lie, descending even further into his intellectual dishonesty in true liberal fashion.
Actually, Crude, if Carl Sagan really said "We will become star stuff", I am most surprised. He should have known better.
There is no way in hell that any of our material selves will ever become "star stuff" ever again - not in the foreseeable lifetime of the universe. (True, every atom in our bodies heavier than lithium was once deep within the core of a long ago exploded star, but that's all in the past.) Our sun is not of sufficient mass to ever go supernova. It would have to be nearly 5 times as massive as it is. What will happen is that, about 4-5 billion years from now, the sun will begin to exhaust the available hydrogen in its core and grow very unstable. It will (in a relatively short time of just a few million years) swell up into a red giant, engulfing Mercury and Venus, but probably (almost certainly) not the Earth. This phase too will be somewhat short-lived, and the sun will then expel well over half its mass into nearby space as what is known as a "planetary nebula". This phase is extraordinarily short, lasting perhaps 10,000 years. Once enough mass has been shed, what's left will collapse back onto itself, to end its life as a white dwarf.
Throughout all this sturm und drang, the Earth itself (and what remains of our material selves) will be baked to a cinder, but will not be part of the recycled mass spewed out into interstellar space. So anyone hoping for his or her body to someday end up as "star stuff" will be sorely disappointed. It will merely be baked hard slag on a waterless, airless, lifeless, and frozen solid rock that once was Earth, circling a pinpoint has-been star that once was the Sun.
And it will stay that way until this universe ends.
Bob,
Actually, Crude, if Carl Sagan really said "We will become star stuff", I am most surprised. He should have known better.
If fairness to Sagan in particular, I don't know if he said 'we will become' or merely 'we were'. I actually am less critical of Sagan than others, given that he'd probably be repulsed by the modern Cult of Gnu, agnostic that he was. But hey, given what you say, yet another nail in the coffin for 'the stuff of stars'.
"I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking. The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides."
- Carl Sagan
"If some good evidence for life after death were announced, I'd be eager to examine it; but it would have to be real scientific data, not mere anecdote. As with the face on Mars and alien abductions, better the hard truth, I say, than the comforting fantasy."
- Carl Sagan
"given that he'd probably be repulsed by the modern Cult of Gnu, agnostic that he was"
- crude
To Sagan, the word 'atheist' implied absolute certainty, (you know, like what YOU have). The vast majority of atheists today, including myself, and Richard Dawkins too, do not profess absolute certainty about the non-existence of deities. They are all about evidence, and so was Sagan. Don't imagine for a second that he was more like you than us.
"So anyone hoping for his or her body to someday end up as "star stuff" will be sorely disappointed."
We already are star dust, Bob. We were made from the stuff of stars. We remain the stuff of stars. We are and always will be an integral element of the natural cosmic cycle of the universe. I have no need to wait for a solar collapse to imagine becoming star dust again. I already am star dust, elements that can only be products of cataclysmic events of earlier stars and nebulae, a wholly naturalistic and natural occurrence of cosmic occurrence. The proof is clear and stark. No need to inveigle a god, especially a peculiarly Christian god into the equation. From an objective POV such small-minded, culturally-derived God-think is just so ...... terrestrial... and so ...... earth-centric. Any sensible, reasonable person in space looking back at that pale blue dot will think, how the f#@k can humans be so stupid to imagine that a god, and only their God no less [of which there are thousands to select from] would choose a primitive, illiterate and ignorant bunch of nomadic goat-herds in the Middle East to be the repository of such momentous news about his presence and that he is keeping a totalitarian eye on all of them to tow the Divine line? [This is what Daniel Dennett would categorize as a deepity: ""A deepity is a proposition that seems to be profound because it is actually logically ill-formed. It has (at least) two readings and balances precariously between them. On one reading it is true but trivial. And on another reading it is false, but would be earth-shattering if true." It is trivially true, a truism, that everyone alive was born or 'created'. But to imagine god created each human is false. It would be truly earth-shattering if science found that each birth was the product of an interventionist force yet to be discovered or explained.
But the idiocy of the story doesn't end there. God repeated the process THREE times to three different groups. First the Jews, and then the Christians, and then the Muslims. And what's more telling them three very different stories, over which they are still conducting a religious war 2,000 years later. It simply beggars belief that one in their right mind would accept such narrow-cast and monocular thinking as true. Surely you can see how geo-centric these fables are? Surely.
That is why religion is anathema to science. It simply does not ring true. There is no evidence for it. There are no facts that comport with any synergy between the explanatory narratives of science and the creation stories of religion [of which there is not one but two different stories in Genesis to choose from]. In fact religious woo about the universe and gods and creation is just ignorant crapola.
We are made of star dust. That is fact. That is truth verified in fact. The God Hypothesis is just a function of emotion and emotion is purely physical. Even the act of mentation and mentation itself is purely derived from physical causes. Nothing more, nothing less. There is nothing more beautiful, nothing more inimitable than the simplicity of this knowledge and understanding. It's beauty transcends any primitive nonsense that starts with 'goddidit'.
Sheesh!
Give us a break will you? Ditch the religious nonsense.
Skeppy,
I never said Sagan believed in an afterlife, so - yawn. He was an agnostic.
To Sagan, the word 'atheist' implied absolute certainty, (you know, like what YOU have).
Oh really?
1) Quote Sagan talking about 'absolute certainty'. Here's mine:
"An atheist is someone who is certain that God does not exist, someone who has compelling evidence against the existence of God. I know of no such compelling evidence. Because God can be relegated to remote times and places and to ultimate causes, we would have to know a great deal more about the universe than we do now to be sure that no such God exists. To be certain of the existence of God and to be certain of the nonexistence of God seem to me to be the confident extremes in a subject so riddled with doubt and uncertainty as to inspire very little confidence indeed."
So, no compelling evidence against the existence of God. No certainty - not 'absolute' certainty, but certainty.
2) Quote me saying I'm absolutely certain re: theism, afterlife, etc. Because I am not 'absolutely certain'. You think you would have picked up on this based on my history of defending the reasonableness of a variety of views, not all of which I hold.
The vast majority of atheists today, including myself, and Richard Dawkins too, do not profess absolute certainty about the non-existence of deities.
Fascinating claim. Provide me with the data to back this up, will you? A poll showing that most self-professed atheists are not certain of God's non-existence would do nicely.
Let me slap down a few mines on that particular field: Dawkins is on record as saying, on a scale of 1 to 7 (1 being totally certain God exists, 7 being totally certain God does not exist), he's a 6.9. Let me guess: Sagan has no problem with someone being 99.9999% certain God doesn't exist. Oh but that addition of .0001%, that's the problem?
Meanwhile, PZ Myers, Michael Shermer and others state that no possible evidence for God's existence could ever be offered. The list goes on.
The evidence, as usual, does not look good for your position.
They are all about evidence, and so was Sagan.
So you agree with Sagan that there is no compelling evidence against God's existence? ;)
Don't imagine for a second that he was more like you than us.
When did I say he was 'more like me'? I said he was an agnostic who would find the Cult of Gnu reprehensible. And judging by his words, he would.
You can have Dawkins or Sagan, Skeppy. But on this subject, you cannot have both.
"Let me slap down a few mines on that particular field: Dawkins is on record as saying, on a scale of 1 to 7 (1 being totally certain God exists, 7 being totally certain God does not exist), he's a 6.9. Let me guess: Sagan has no problem with someone being 99.9999% certain God doesn't exist. Oh but that addition of .0001%, that's the problem?"
Talking of statistics:
'In the final analysis, there were not even supposed to be 'religions'. There was only supposed to be religion - one true, and therefore compulsory, factual statement about the spiritual world and moral imperative flowing from those facts. Here, most purely and profoundly, religion implodes - not because religion and anti-religion (i.e. science or symbology) meet but because religion and religion meet. Nothing is more destructive to religion than other religions, it is like meeting one's own anti-matter twin."
Why?
" First, other religions represent alternatives to one's own religion: other people believe in them just as fervently as we do, and they live their lives just as successfully as we do. Then, the diversity of religions forces us to see religion as a culturally relative phenomenon: different groups have different religions that appear adapted to their unique social and even environmental conditions. But if their their religion is relative, then why is ours not? Finally, awareness of other religions reduces the truth-probability of their own. Assuming that there are, say, 1,000 religions in the world, each with an equal chance of being true and all at least to some degree mutually exclusive, then each religion has a 1/1,000 chance of being true and is 999/1,000 chance of being false. in other words, whatever you believed before the comparison, there is only a 0.1% chance of being correct and a 99.9% chance of it being incorrect. If that is not upsetting to credulity, I don't know what is."
Professor David Eller logically, rationally, sensibly and reasonably blows religion right out of the water.
Religion and theology serves no contemporary purpose other than to historically illustrate that it was once a codified format for how we governed society. It illustrated its role as a place-marker in the absence of exponentially greater, better and more efficient explanatory methodologies and powers now available to humankind. It is of no further use going forward.
"So, no compelling evidence against the existence of God."
This is where god-botherers soil their own nest, big-time. There is no necessity to prove a negative. Indeed it is axiomatic that one should not have to prove a negative; one should assume the negative. Even the rule of law, our most basic social instrument of justice, equity and fairness [even though it is not without its flaws] [and definitely not religion] assumes one is 'not guilty' until proven otherwise.
Religion and theology is littered with unsubstantiated claims and assertions. In fact religion is singularly built on unproven open-ended universal declarative claims it makes for itself that cannot be ever be tested. Thinking god is not proof of god. Period.
Now, be reasonable, little mind, and cogitate on this for a moment.
corrigendum:
For:
"If that is not upsetting to credulity, I don't know what is."
Read
If that is not upsetting to religious credulity, I don't know what is."
So, Linton's off in the 'y-yeah, okay, there is no compelling evidence for atheism - but I don't care! I can just have faith that that's true! Axioms!' category, having fled the discussion even further. If he lost anymore ground in this conversation, he'd need to become airborne.
You're up, Skep. Sagan or Dawkins - who do you pick? Because, as has been shown... you cannot have both. ;)
"We already are star dust, Bob. We were made from the stuff of stars."
I will break my Vow of Silence for this one instance to point out how once again, Mr. Wilson never actually reads what he is supposedly "responding" to. If he did, he would have read the following in my posting: "every atom in our bodies heavier than lithium was once deep within the core of a long ago exploded star".
Now back to blessed silence, starting... now!
BTW, my challenge is still open, Papalinton.
http://calebtblog.blogspot.com.au/2013/10/papalintons-ethical-challenge.html
Take your time.
"I will break my Vow of Silence for this one instance to point out how once again, Mr. Wilson never actually reads what he is supposedly "responding" to. If he did, he would have read the following in my posting: "every atom in our bodies heavier than lithium was once deep within the core of a long ago exploded star"."
I made no comment on that in parenthesis because that observation was irrelevant to the rest of the malarkey you were attempting to peddle.
Sheesh! Get a grip on yourself, Bob. I shouldn't have to comment on every small spray of common sense you make. It's the rest of the moonshine making up the balance of your commentary that I take to task. It's just drivel.
I think it best you huddle back into your 'no-speakies' corner and keep quiet for a change.
"So, Linton's off in the 'y-yeah, okay, there is no compelling evidence for atheism - but I don't care! I can just have faith that that's true! Axioms!' category, having fled the discussion even further. If he lost anymore ground in this conversation, he'd need to become airborne."
No, little mind, it has nothing to do with atheism. No need for compelling evidence for atheism. Atheism is simply the axiomatic position of assuming the negative until something blips on the radar. God crapola makes no blip on the any objective screen known to humanity. God crapola does however make a huge phosphorescent blip on the cultural radar screen and it makes as many different shapes of blips as there are different cultures. Hardly what one would call a blip that everybody would understand and appreciate as singularly universal, especially one registering a Jesus-god type of non-human entity. I understand Ganesha, the elephant-headed god even registers a blip on the cultural radar screen. But it's not a blip you would even consider ..... kosher; although a billion Hindus claim that he is real.
In summary, the Jesus-god blip only registers with those that have been hand-fed from the Christian trough.
You need to get a grip on yourself, as well, because your religious edifice is, piece by piece, brick by brick, being deconstructed and dismantled on each occasion it bumps up against science and makes similar claims.
There are no more hiding places, no dark crevice left for the Jesus-god to slither into away from the glare of rational and logical scrutiny and investigation.
Carl Sagan was just as much an intellectually dishonest fool, and just as much a 'Science!' fetishist, as Dawkins or any other Gnu Atheist. The difference between Sagan and, say, Linton, is only perceived tone -- the "difference" is in your mind, not in mutual reality.
... Some people are made of more bulldust than stardust.
Ape.
"Carl Sagan was just as much an intellectually dishonest fool, and just as much a 'Science!' fetishist, as Dawkins or any other Gnu Atheist."
My point exactly, except for the part about being a fool. Sagan based his belief on scientific evidence. He certainly was not fool enough to buy crude's logic that because of a lack of hard evidence that there is no Ganesha, that somehow leaves open a strong possibility that Ganesha exists. That's the kind of stuff made from bulldust.
Ape: "... Some people are made of more bulldust than stardust."
Especially the sort who get all Woo-Woo! imagining they are "stardust".
After seeing all these comments in my inbox about "stardust", I decided to see where that little subthread originates -- not at all to my surprise, it was with the Mad Dingo.
Once-And-Future-Worrmshit: "A far more beautiful and poignant end-to-life narrative than the unreal and unnatural crapola of a Christian resurrection, is that when we die, we once more become the stuff of [wormshit], absorbed back into the [humus] out of which the accident of evolutionary biology resulted in our fleeting moment. We were grown naturally, through the evolutionary process from [wormshit] ..., There is far greater transcendence moment and import in the natural reality of this narrative than the utter superstitious nonsense about some ethereal putatively live non-human entity created us. I [jumped onboard] the [atheistic/materialistic] mytheme because it is only a mytheme [... and it promises that, ultimately, there is no one to condemn me for treating others as means-to-ends]. The [atheistic/materialistic] origin story is a facade; all front, no back or sides, an unsubstantiated unidimensional viewpoint that takes no account of the reality of science [much less reason] because the origin story promulgated was born out of and is product of pitiful ignorance, primitive superstition, ancient fable and antediluvian oral history [and I wouldn't have it any other way]."
What more need be said?
here's the future of Mr Wormshit-to-be
"here's the future of Mr Wormshit-to-be"
Can you say strawman? Oh, sorry. You'd have to know something about making a logical argument.
"A far more beautiful and poignant end-to-life narrative than the unreal and unnatural crapola of a Christian resurrection, is that when we die, we once more become the stuff of stars, absorbed back into the universe out of which the accident of evolutionary biology resulted in our fleeting moment."
Really, "stuff". How touching. And not unreal?
oozielionel,
And, as I wrote above, it's not even true!
Yes, our material selves were once (several billion years ago) "star stuff", but never again - ever. Read my post from the 29th at 2:41 PM. That's what's gonna happen.
Sagan said (quite correctly), "We are made of star stuff." Only crude (confused that he is about anything scientific) said anything about 'becoming' star stuff.
No, Skep. Linton started this whole thing by writing (in the 200th comment to this thread) "when we die, we once more become the stuff of stars."
Very poetic, perhaps, but as I pointed out, absolutely false. Yes, we once were "the stuff of stars" (billions of years ago), but due to the mass of our sun being what it is, we will never be so again. What I wrote yesterday at 2:41 PM is the unanimous consensus of astronomers as to what will happen to the Earth (and everything on it, including what were once our bodies) in the future... No stars in our future.
Bob, nobody is arguing with you. Linton said "we once more become the stuff of stars, absorbed back into the universe ..." He's saying we go back to what we started from. crude is talking about becoming "an inconsequential part of a radioactive fireball." HE's the only one talking about becoming a star. So make your argument with him, if you have the stomach for it.
Bob, nobody is arguing with you. Linton said "we once more become the stuff of stars, absorbed back into the universe ..." He's saying we go back to what we started from.
"We once more become the stuff of stars", cretin, implies that we will become part of stars again. If the claim is merely that we are made of 'star-stuff', that is not a future state: we are that, now.
Hence, my replying to Linton and laughing at his 'but we'll become star stuff again!' horseshit. When Bob made his correction, I immediately deferred to him about it.
Does the social worker know you're on the internet again, Skep? You know you're not allowed your hour of web browsing until you can tie your shoes five days in a row without peeing your pants.
Oh! Boy. Belief in god means they believe in anything, even their own fantasy.
Bob
"No, Skep. Linton started this whole thing by writing (in the 200th comment to this thread) "when we die, we once more become the stuff of stars."
Very poetic, perhaps, but as I pointed out, absolutely false. Yes, we once were "the stuff of stars" (billions of years ago), but due to the mass of our sun being what it is, we will never be so again."
Yes Bob, i did say that we would once again become the stuff of stars. The statement still stand the test of credibility. But I do agree with you. It could read in the minutely nit-picky way that you jumped on, a-contextually. I should have proof-read more diligently. Sloppy writing. But I would have thought that the context of my overall comment would have made it clear that we are and always will be made of star stuff, and that on death we simply become the unbinded constituents of star stuff.
But you are so completely wrong when you say 'we were once the 'stuff of stars' (billions of years ago) ... and we will never be so again', past tense. No we weren't. I certainly didn't live billions of years ago, we are as we live right now, present tense, a veritable composite of star stuff. I say there is a good chance that when the Andromeda and Milky Way galaxies collide in a few years from now [astronomically speaking that is] there is a pretty good bet that planets, stars etc etc will be subsumed into another star formation and whatever carbon that might have constituted my once organic body could quite possibly be rearranged into a heavier element in the stellar conflagration. I would say with almost sublime certainty that the probability of this happening is almost infinite orders of magnitude greater than the rather low-brow, terrestrial and unsophisticated idea that a Christian Jesus-god, let alone any number of other gods extant, 'created' me. You rendition is sooooo ........ faith-based.
And this is the point at which faith claims fail so miserably. The self-set trap that Christian god-botherers persistently fall into is to make the claim that Jesus-god made us. They simply do not understand or even realize that when they make a faith claim like this they are making a knowledge claim. And such a claim is a knowledge claim. Epistemically, faith claims are statements of fact about the world. But faith as utilized by god-botherers is a fundamentally unreliable epistemology. Because when put under the methodological scrutiny of reason and evidence it simply becomes shapeless. This is so eruditely observed in:
"Your religious beliefs typically depend on the community in which you were raised or live. The spiritual experiences of people in ancient Greece, medieval Japan or 21st-century Saudi Arabia do not lead to belief in Christianity. it seems therefore, that religious belief very likely tracks not truth but social conditioning". Gary Gutting, "The Stone", New York Times, September 14, 2011.
Amen to that.
""We once more become the stuff of stars", cretin, implies that we will become part of stars again. If the claim is merely that we are made of 'star-stuff', that is not a future state: we are that, now."
This is utter crapola, of course, the best of pseudo-science that god-botherers can rake up. Any idiot knows that a planet like Earth could just as easily be reabsorbed in a stellar ball like the sun. All it would take is something reasonable to knock it out of orbit and the rest is history. There are countless examples of this happening when planets, asteroids, even other stars, come too close to other stars and galaxies. Jesus H Christ, read up about it. And if a planet like earth got sucked up into the sun, all the star stuff that made the planet in the first instance would simply be subsumed back to the elemental furnace. As I say, there is more likelihood that the carbon that once constituted me could just as easily become different star stuff with a heavier or lighter atomic weight as a result, than imagining that a Jesus-god 'created' me. So whatever Bob imagines is immutable because it happened in an exploding star billions of years ago and is not going to happen again is simply pseudo-science crapola with a Christian flavour.
Get real boys.
Oh no, Skep! You tried to assist Linton, and he ditched you. He's banking on becoming an inconsequential part of a radioactive ball of fire after all!
Until then, well. Wormshit, I believe it was said? On the other hand, he clearly won't mind that - won't it be grand, Skep, when Linton's putrescent corpse is made of the same stuff that Cult of Gnu "reasoning" and "arguments" are? ;)
"Oh no, Skep! You tried to assist Linton, and he ditched you. He's banking on becoming an inconsequential part of a radioactive ball of fire after all!"
You really should learn to read. He affirmed what I said, then went on to say that the chance of our matter becoming part of a star (which is certainly greater than zero, contrary to Bob's assertion, regardless of how small it might be) is far greater than the chance that we were created by a god. This was expressed in plain English, and you still have no idea what he's talking about Sheesh!
He affirmed what I said, then went on to say that the chance of our matter becoming part of a star (which is certainly greater than zero, contrary to Bob's assertion, regardless of how small it might be) is far greater than the chance that we were created by a god.
Sure Skep. You go from 'Crude was wrong, Linton didn't say that!' to 'Okay Linton did say that, but he was right!' to this.
Sagan would be so disappointed in you. But you've already made it clear you couldn't give a shit about him. You chose Dawkins over Sagan - I hope that serves you well. ;)
Give it over crude. You've lucked out. Religion has lost the battle for the high moral ground. Religion has lost the culture wars, with the number of 'nones' increasing every time the religiose open their mouths and pontificate from their Book in the feeble attempt to convince the skeptical young that adherence to a primitive mindset and its correlative supernatural superstition is the best explanation. Religion has lost the mantle as the principal explanatory tool with the greatest of explanatory power. Have a read <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-mcswain/christianity-is-dying-spirituality-is-thriving_b_1950804.html>OF THIS</a>
We might argue over the finer points of cosmic science but that in no way will deliver a resurrection of Catlick-ism to its halcyon days of Aquinas. Christian theology and scientifically-uninformed philosophy of the Feser variety are dead in the water weighed down by the very same rock on which it was built. Because like a rock christian theism cannot move to higher ground as the tide of reason, logic and evidence flows in. The article above demonstrates clearly why it is that Christianity is dead in the water if it persists on clinging onto the foundational claims listed that it makes for itself.
You gotta give it over. History is littered with dead religions and forgotten gods. Gods don't die. They get forgotten. The power of the Jesus-god of today will inevitably be forgotten just as the mighty power and influence over life and death once wielded by Osiris, Mithra and Jupiter are now forgotten. The article cited points that out in no uncertain manner even though the author, a Christian, tries to put a comforting spin on it.
Have a read OF THIS
Give it over crude. You've lucked out.
What I have, Linton, is schooled both of you pathetic gents so hard you have no response to me anymore.
'Dinosaurs'? The both of you are dinosaurs by your own worldview. Clinging to ways that the future shall repudiate - you know not when, you know not what.
'Progress'? It doesn't exist for you. There is naught but undirected evolution, going nowhere but to, eventually, an ash pit. You pretend to hope that, someday, the by-then multiple times wormshit that used to be your putrescent corpse may be, for a moment, an inconsequential part of a radioactive fireball. We all know better.
About the only thing you have that I don't is hatred. Hate is about the only thing that keeps you going anymore - and really, you don't even hate with style, much less accuracy. You are, in your declining years, one thing first and foremost around here: the intellectual whipping boy for an anonymous theist on a small online blog - who exposed you not only as a plagiarist and a liar, not only as an intellectual lightweight with nary a bit of evidence or arguments at his disposal - but a sad, lonely old man, who comes here not out of a commitment to atheism, but to fill an emptiness in his life.
An emptiness that will not be filled, because your worldview demands it not be filled. So you tell yourself that if you parrot Sagan - a man who is on record as having little regard for you, the convinced atheists - maybe that hole will be filled. But, it won't be.
So thank you, Linton, for handing me yet another victory. The difference is, this means nothing to me. Proving you wrong, pointing out your flaws, is nothing to brag about. But at least you serve as a living lesson to onlookers. You are what young non-believers dread they may become. You have become a scarecrow for the Cult of Gnu.
Anima ejus, et ánimæ ómnium fidélium defunctórum, per misericórdiam Dei requiéscant in pace.
You forgot the obligatory Amen at the end of your little burial prayer, crude. Oops! I forgot. It's me who should follow your call with the response, Amen.
It's been a few years since I mindlessly intoned this sort of primitive palaver. Oh Well! We can't all live our lives within a 1stC mindset, can we? You are so much better and more practiced at it than I. As Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) English Romantic poet, critic and philosopher, noted:
"Not one man in ten thousand has either the strength of mind or goodness of heart to be an atheist."
The quintessential Enlightenment anthem.
Quis est iste involvens sententias sermonibus inperitis?
"Quis est iste involvens sententias sermonibus inperitis?"
That would be crude.
Wait for it... here it comes...
God: "Quis est iste involvens sententias sermonibus inperitis?"
Linton: "It was me Jesus-god and believe me I'm no puppet pushover like Job, the man who's family you wantonly and depravedly slaughtered to satisfy your own reprehensible blood-lust. Or are you gonna come down and slaughter my family as well now that I pissed you off?"
[Oops! See how facile it was of me to start having a conversation Jesus- god. It just goes to show how easy it is to fall into the trap of supernatural superstition, to revert back to the alluring and seductive innate primitive predisposition we all possess to imagine and project ghosts, gods, leprechauns, zombies and all manner of things that go bump in the night. It demonstrates how so very easy we revert to primeval type if we mindlessly override all our learning and education and what we now know about the world, about us, about the cosmos and do not discipline ourselves to engage in facts and evidence as the principal source of knowledge and understanding. In theology, fantasy and reality go hand in hand. Indeed fantasy is indistinguishable from reality. Through science, reality is cleaved decisively from fantasy.]
Sheesh!
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