Saturday, September 15, 2012

Coming in at the bottom...

You have a dirty mind.  That sentence was supposed to end with 'of the IQ spectrum.'  So, coming in at the bottom if the IQ spectrum is...  YouTube's MegaSage007!  A self-proclaimed geocentrist, young-earth creationist and intellectual.  None of those claims are true.  In a discussion I was having with him, he dropped this gem.

You were born into Bible morality for the obvious reason your Creator has written his Moral Book, and if you insist on deciding what your morals will be from day to day, from situation to situation subjectively - you will serve the Devil and his doctrines including psychology, feminism, heliocentrism, sodomy, abortion on demand, the big bang, abiogenesis, evolution, cosmology, etc and your God given conscience will be ruined by your violating it til you could have no morals at all.

You just can't make this stuff up!
From the top...


  • What is it to be born into Bible morality?
  • The 'Creator' never put a pen to papyrus.
  • Having reasoned morality is different from having no morality.
  • Psychology is an area of study, not a doctrine.
  • Feminism is a doctrinal worldview in a way.  It's more an out-out-control rights group.  I'm a secular humanist egalitarian, feminism isn't one of the flags I fly.
  • Heliocentism...  Reality, not a doctrine  If you can out-of-hand deny physics, astronomy and your kindergarten education, I guess geocentrism could seem valid.
  • Sodomy?  Who cares how people like to stimulate that nerve?
  • Abortion on Demand...Actually an issue, but not a doctrine.  Before the fetus has developed into a viable organism and is a mere cell mass, I see no problem with disassembling it.
  • The big bang...  Not a doctrine.  If you don't take science seriously enough to recognize how the solar system works at an elementary level how do you expect to understand quantum mechanics?
  • Abiogenesis, a hypothesis, not a doctrine.
  • Evolution, a theory, not a doctrine.
  • Cosmology, an area of study, not a doctrine.
  • etc, probably not doctrines either.
My God-given conscience?  Do we really want to get into conscience numbing events?  If we do, the Bible is right there...

"your God given conscience will be ruined by your violating it til you could have no morals at all."
WHAT...THE...FUCK!
Sure, conscience can be suppressed by certain actions are habits, but that's not a loss of morality.  It's a loss of empathy perhaps.

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

The Three Gods

I'm not sure where this originated, but I heard it from Matt Dillahunty.

Let us assume that there are three gods;
God 1 exists and manifests in reality.
God 2 exists, but doesn't manifest in reality.
God 3 doesn't exist.

The argument is that God 2 and God 3 are indistinguishable.  They are both untestable claims, as there can be no parameters for that which doesn't manifest in reality.  So neither God 2 or God 3 can be defined meaningfully without interactions with reality.

God 1 on the other hand, manifests itself in reality.  I'm not admitting the argument that it used to directly manifest in reality, because there is no evidence of it doing so.  At any rate, this is a testable claim.  If a God 1 manifests in reality, it has a measurable effect on something.  The challenge is to determine which something we're discussing.  I'll open myself for ridicule and say that there is no measurable effect of any deity.  I invite contradiction and correction, please, prove me wrong.

The end result seems to be that God 1 is nonviable while God 2 is viable, but meaningless.  God 3 of course, doesn't exist.

There are three options;
  1. There exists a deity which manifests in reality, but masks it's interventions such that it's impossible to verify it, making it look like...
  2. There exists a deity which does not manifest in reality at all, making it look like...
  3. The deity which does not exist.
Based on that progression, it would seem that an interventionist god is a false and incoherent idea in reality.

Sunday, September 2, 2012

The persecution of Christians

I went to church and other Christian events.  The idea that Christians are persecuted in America is alive and well.  Look at how right they are too.

It's illegal for a Christian to hold public office in 6 states.
Even where it is legal, declaring one's self a Christian is political suicide.
There are no/extremely few overtly Christian television or radio channels/programs.
Being a Christian can ostracize an individual from the other 90+% of society.
People are calling for all Christians to leave America.
There has never been an overtly Christian president.
Christians regularly get kicked out of their homes for their religion.
Christians get death threats regularly for nothing but their belief.
Christians are the least trusted group in America.
There are people out to blacklist all Christian-owned companies.
"Christians...should not be considered citizens"

See all that persecution?   Actually...replace Christian with secularist/atheist in each of those.

We live in a society where being a theist and more specifically a Christian is the norm and accepted default.  I'm sorry that your end times pity party doesn't really play out, but this is reality.  Religious privilege is alive and well.  A legislation can make it to the house which would revoke the rights of any group on a theistic basis.  This isn't a new thing.  For as long as history can remember, people have been killing, torturing and invading each other based on differences of religion.  If humans are to progress as a race, we must abolish this nonsense.  Not abolish it with the sword, but with science, reason and evidence.  There will always be some people too into their beliefs to let go of them even long enough to take a critical look at them.  These people must be tolerated willingly, but eventually we can hope that their influence will diminish.