Atheism

The flood is merely a story with some important morals and imagery at its core. That there have been many devastating floods in localised settings is beyond question and it is perfectly natural for myths to build up around them and be used as both entertainment and guidance. In those days the world was what they could see and storytelling an important aspect of tribal life.

Obviously you take the story as literally as the fundies do. The Bible might be compared to the corpus of American movies seen as a whole. I'm aware that you don't know it but you are being anachronistic.

FBM you are evil.

Kirk Cameron's banana harangue is by now familiar to us all. I was ignorant of the peanut butter argument, until minutes ago. It would play well on a comedy show, such as SNL, but these folks are evidently serious.

Wow - nothing impresses the stupidly ignorant like stupid ignorance I guess.

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And nothing impresses the brilliant, intellectual brainboxes like the contemplation of their own brilliant, intellectual brainbox which they conjure out of nowhere, as new life might be, by the simple expedient of asserting the stupid ignorance of others.

The technique is the RIC. (The Reverse Invidious Comparison). It works very much like a charm in the company of other brilliant, intellectual brainboxes. Elsewhere it is seen as playpen bawling.

Amazing contemplations that you you so brilliantly construct from your brainbox there Spendius.

There's nothing brilliant about what I said rl. It's as simple and obvious as the sky being up. The RIC is a common feature, very common in fact, of A2K debate. Asserting that someone, sometimes even everybody, to be stupidly ignorant implies that the asserter is a brilliant, intellectual brainbox and with the self-indulgent convenience of eschewing the botheration of providing any further evidence.

Chopping parts out of sentences in order to be "witty" is just as bad because it's cheating. The use of the RIC is proof of stupid ignorance and is not something to be mended but distorting what someone has said is devious. Not that your methods cheat me. I can't be cheated because I know what I wrote and how you have manipulated it. It can only cheat others.

And once you have shown a willingness, an eagerness even, to cheat others your every word becomes suspect from there on in.

Do you mean like cheating people out of knowing the truth about God?

What hinge so studiously avoided facing up to was that the peanut butter was merely a symbol of organic mixtures. A visual aid to make the point.

The billions of jars of peanut butter are as nothing when compared to all possible organic/inorganic possibilities in actual existence over the unimaginable period of time since life began on earth and that there is no evidence of new life springing into being from any one of them except the original one (see Evolution theory) for which there is no explanation and, indeed, no possibility of there ever being one.

So the question resolves itself into why does the human race seek an explanation and is not content with the mechanical, causal sequences hinge's curiosity is satisfied with?

The answer is self evident. It is that the human race is stupidly ignorant, in hinge's opinion, for being curious about the first cause and that curiosity is what has provided the funds for the CERN project. Thus only atheists who are satisfied with the simple explanations of mechanical, causal sequences are not stupidly ignorant: the corollary of which is that they are brilliant brainboxes. Obviously. QED.

Except that all organisms apart from humans are completely satisfied with mechanical, causal sequence explanations and thus hinge is taking us back to the anthropoid stage. In that stage there is no symbolism which explains why the peanut butter can't be seen symbolically by those stuck in it. The presenter probably didn't wish to get into a tropical swamp, in a thunderstorm, with a stirring implement but had he done so the point would be the same. He seems to have overestimated the intelligence of a part of his audience though.

hinge is tickling his own balls to be perfectly honest about it.

Tell us what the truth about God is then. I'm eager to know in idle moments as I am sure others are.

I think of God in the same way I think about the Minister of Transport. An authority for a set of rules which help to keep things moving in the right direction and as efficiently as maybe under all the circumstances and without which nothing short of a chaotic fiasco would result. Except that punishments imposed by the Minister of Transport are in the here and now and are thus a large multiple of quanta more serious than punishments in the bowels of the earth during the beyond. Being disqualified from driving for three years, fined £800 plus £229.17 costs and being ordered to take the driving test again is far more serious than anything Dante or Bosch dreamed up. One only need consider the sheer amount of sinning that goes on to get an idea of how seriously people take God's punishments.

But those who do take God's punishments seriously, and I don't mean those who say they do in order to cut a caper, are very sweet of nature. They will all have studied the Highway Code as they had agreed they would on the form they signed.

Which God would you like to know the truth about?

Any one you wish rl.

Best quote about how unappealing Heaven is starting at 1:02



At a party...
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The best joke was the "perfectly serviceable Tuesday evening" one.

Have you found an unedited version of this discussion? I'd prefer to watch it without the counterpoints cut out.

Oh, Found it.

Thanks, Thomas.

I like Hitchens party analogy. I think i'll go post in the Wabbit's thread about the fear of ceasing to exist.