See, the Seattle Times editorial board agrees with me. Only in a lot more boring fashion. And I agree with them: Rev. Terry Jones is “an idiot.”
If Jones wants to be a beacon instead of a bozo, why doesn’t this clown organize an interfaith group to feed the poor, build housing and help sustain families of all faiths through this economic crisis?
But the question is, would 25th LD Republican nominee Hans Zeiger agree with the Times call for “interfaith” outreach, or would he find the editors to be a bunch of watered-down ecumenists?
Unitarians, mainstream Baptists, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, members of the “Military Pagan Network” and other watered-down ecumenists will hold an “Interfaith Day of Prayer and Reflection” on the steps of the Oklahoma State Capitol today to pray to the generic god.
[…] But … the significant difference between the kumbaya sessions and interfaith vigils and atheist protests of the Religious Left and the Bible studies and prayer circles of the Religious Right is that our God is real.
I dunno… sounds like Zeiger considers Jones to be one of the real Christians praying to the real God. Perhaps, if the Times wants to do its job of educating voters, it should ask Zeiger about that, along with all the other batshit-crazy stuff he wrote?
OMG. ENOUGH! Enough of these idiots who think there are REALLY different magical invisible beings floating in the sky and you can “pray” to the wrong one(s). You can’t.
If even you “believe” some supernatural being magicked our universe into being…that “thing” is what everyone is talking about and trying to understand/worship in a human way…a being that can create trillions of galaxies with billions of stars/planets in EACH galaxy over multiple dimensions spanning billions of years. Getting a human head around that is not possible. We can keep 5-8 things in consciousness at once, think linearly and only in 3 dimensions. So we create our own cultural traditions and methods to deal with it. ALL of these cultural “gods” are just pale sad human reflections of something that would be infinitely beyond our understanding. As much as trying to explain why Britney Spears is a joke to a microbe.
So when these lovely folks start bitching, killing and kvetching about what it’s “name” is, what dinner meat is ok or forbidden, who we can have sex with, what kind of animals we can keep, what color our clothes can be, who we’re allowed to kill, etc, etc, etc….all that isn’t “god”…that’s us. Humans care about who I have sex with and what I eat, not god. Humans care who I give my allegiance (money/power) to, not god. Humans care about my politics, not god.
The creator (if you believe in one) of trillions upon trillions of solar systems and planets for billions of years in possibly infinite dimensions does not give a tin shit what “name” a silly little bi-ped on one planet in the outer spiral arm of one galaxy comes up with.
Grow up. Stop acting like petulant children.
The problem with Abrahamic religions is two fold – God and Abraham. First, you have a “God” that is so petty, so infantile, so immature and so insecure that he/she went off whining to Abraham that ol’Abe wasn’t submissive and attentive enough, and to prove his fealty Abe would have to murder his own son. Then you have Abraham, who was such a cowardly, weak willed motherfucker that he went along with the whole yeah-sure-what-the-fuck-I’ll-kill-my=kid idea.
Then a little while later, this “God” had a son of his/her own and had him murdered just for shits and giggles.
If those are your role models, you’re bound to be a little off.
Zeiger has a friend in Jonathon Gardner.
Wow. So Alki asserts, as a matter of fact, that there is no God, which is far LESS logically demonstrable than that there IS a God (I can bring up evidence for a God, but cannot bring up evidence for a not-God).
And while noting how great a real God would be, he incredibly asserts we could not possibly understand such a being … even though, if God were that great, he would also be great enough to give us the ability to — in a reasonable though incomplete way — understand himself.
And then Alki has the illogical nerve to say what God doesn’t care about … ? I thought we couldn’t understand God, Alki? But YOU can!?
(The Apostle Paul made the point about our lack of understanding far more eloquently, but the conclusion that we therefore can’t understand God AT ALL is unsustainable.)
You’re the petulant child, here, Alki. Shaking your fist at the sky and telling God that he doesn’t exist, but if he does, then, you’re the only one who would really understand him.
And worf … down boy. You’re completely misrepresenting the relationship between God and Abraham. Try to understand that God cannot have the emotions and characteristics you ascribe to him, and then maybe you’ll realize your error.
@3
That name of yours is an insult to the Autistic!
“I can bring up evidence for a God”
Well, have at it, Pudge. Show us what you’ve got.
Here is Wonkette’s take on Hans.
http://wonkette.com/420011/hou.....ore-420011
@4
You know the difference between a true believer and an athiest?
A true believer knows there are 4,199 religions in the world that are wrong and ONE that is right.
An athiest knows there are 4,200 religions in the world that are wrong and none that are right.
Of course you can’t prove a negative. I’m with Steve, let’s see your evidence.
Perhaps pudge is like the subject of this post: confused
Who did Adam and Eve’s kids marry?
Re 2
Kierkegaard addressd Abraham and Isaac very compellingly in ‘Fear and Trembling’. I can read any one of thousands of of some of AD minds who have similarly treated Christianity to academic tests.
And your take on Christ is clearly not based on any familiarity with Christianity.
I can see beauty and truth in some aspects of the story of Siddhartha, without embracing the faith. I can see a that to admire in scientific curiousity and method attaining great gains for mankind, wihtout seeing it as the only approach to knowledge.
Evangelical atheists like you, Alki, and that obnoxious opportunist Hitchens can’t see your own dogmatism, and that is truly the mark of a small mind.
Re 4
“And worf … down boy. You’re completely misrepresenting the relationship between God and Abraham. Try to understand that God cannot have the emotions and characteristics you ascribe to him, and then maybe you’ll realize your error.”
Worf can’t realize his own error. That would require a humility impossible for him and other evangelical atheists convinced that they are the center of their own universe. Anyway, Christianity gives him an outlet for his anger and hostility towards… well, whatever really drives it.
I have a friend who is atheist on thought provoking grounds with whom I’ve discussed God or his absence for hours. People like this are small and mean minds incapable of that kind of discussion. With them it’s all schoolyard taunts and hatred.
RE 12
I hate these finger pads on laptops.
First paragraph should have read-
“I can read any one of thousands of some the greatest minds since the time of Christ, who have similarly treated Christianity to academic tests.”
What can I say, I grew up with pens and paper, not these computer things.
On reflection I owe Worf an apology.
For some reason on the subject of faith he or she is irrationally abusive. But generally the viewpoints presented are well thought out, whatever I may think of them otherwise.
I suppose it’s the cavalier dismissal of 2 millenia of intellectual tradition around Christianity that annoys me. It’s the sneering way the atheist left looks at anyone who has a different belief that just chaps my hide. In typifying this, Worf took the brunt of annoyance meant for a whole movement of evangelical atheists.
Apologies.
Re 8
Actually the difference is this. An atheist believes the vast majority of his or her fellow men to be wrong, and often stupid.
A ‘true believer’ recognizes that 4199 religions got it half right. A true believer recognizes that religions are humanities instinctive reaction to the clear presence of God, whatever they may call that God.
A true believer recognizes that religions are humanities instinctive reaction to the clear presence of God, whatever they may call that God
Truly one of the more muddled thoughts you have put forth. If only you hadn’t written this, some of what you said would have held some hope for your thinking. But there is no “clear presence of God” in Hinduism, in Buddhism, in Jainism, in any of the polytheistic/ pantheistic world’s religions. Your god is one of many gods and goddesses, and to lump them under a single heading is disingenuous at best, and flatly wrong on too many accounts to post. Please stick to what you know….
@15 – I don’t think you owe me an apology, or visa versa, but I accept yours and offer my own, if you are offended. The comment at 2 is a riff on a Louis CK routine, for what that’s worth.
For the record, I actually have no problem with faith, be it Abrahamic, eastern or other. I appreciate that there are people who do truly great things for the community via their faith – working with the homeless, the addicted, those in prison and other social justice issues. I am also aware that without those progressive communities of faith, this country would be in far worse shape than we are – for instance, there may have never been a Civil Rights Act without church involvement.
I do have a righteous aversion to right wing theology, however. The assorted charlatans of TBN and the mega-church movement make a mockery of the words and teachings of Jesus that is, IMHO, far more offensive and blasphemous than anything I could say. So, my poorly worded riff is really directed at them (and their Judaic and Islamic counterparts) and not at religion per se.
Mr. Hubris @13, “That would require a humility impossible for him”
Mr. Hubris @15 “It’s the sneering way the atheist left looks at anyone who has a different belief”
-heh Sneering. A lack of humility. You don’t project much, do you?
Steve,
My favorite reference to hubris is in Camus version of Sisyphus. I found the original myth of Sisyphus a bit appalling, honestly.
But I don’t think I’m guilty of it. Regrettably I do have a tendency to arrogance. It’s a character flaw I work on without making any apparent progress, but so it goes.
If I understand the term hubris it’s pride that sets oneself above God (or for the Greeks who invented the term, the gods.) For all my many flaws, this one I honestly don’t think I have.
Lost @12,
It might surprise and/or disturb you to find that I was deeply influenced by both Kierkegaard (though I would recommend that folks here start with Philosophical Fragments rather than Fear and Trembling) and Hesse’s Siddhartha, the well-worn paperback of which I make a point of re-reading every few years.
In fact, it was Kierkegaard who helped me come to terms with the baffling paradox of how otherwise smart, educated, rational people could actually believe in that supernatural spirit thing folks call God. It was Kierkegaard who taught me that faith and reason have nothing to do with each other; I can no more rationally understand your theism than you can understand my lack of it. I’m kinda comfortable with that, if perhaps less so than I was back when I first read Kierkegaard in college.
Siddhartha speaks to me for entirely different reasons. His journey presents great insights into aspects of human nature that are so easy to ignore, forget or overlook.
Watch out! Jezebel is pissed.
http://jezebel.com/5634253/rep.....ist-agenda
@20 I was very much into Camus as a young man in my late teens and early twenties. One couldn’t be into RFK worship without knowing your Camus. I eventually abandoned consideration of the absurd to embrace the folly, where I find much more humor. heh- Camus was no Mr. Chuckles. But like Camus, I like to focus on the pause at the mountaintop before the first step of the descent. Indeed, I’ve discussed Sisyphus lately in the context of three people I know – my ex, and two old musician friends. Each has lost a child. One friend lost a son in an accident, one friend’s daughter was horribly murdered, and the ex’s son committed suicide. You know, sometimes a person can reach a point in life where they simply refuse to go down the mountain anymore. I must say that I am humbled before God to think of these people I care about and of the pain they know.
I’ve hung around one of those old friends latey, playing some golf and talking over dinner. It’s like he’s decided that he’s finished with standing alone at the mountaintop, staring into space, refusing to move an inch. Life can come to a stop, and yet you still live. The pause becomes life. And yet the mountain remains real. It is still there. The stone still lays there in the valley far below. But some people simply reach the point where they refuse to play the game. Anyways, it looks like my old friend is ready to give it a go again, golf club in hand this time, laughing, and embracing the folly of it all. It’s great to see this happen before my eyes. Better yet, Ms. Wingnut gets to be a part of it too. For her own reasons, she is very deeply moved to see that someone who was once one of the mountaintop’s undead has returned to be with the living. I believe that it gives her hope.
Suicide and the absurd. What a downer.
Ah, here we are, a day later, no evidence from pudge. What a surprise (not).