I suffered from inflammation of the moral barometer once, and ended up accidentally volunteering at a homeless shelter for a few weeks.
12 Likes
Thatâs pressurece.
1 Like
Kind of âOKâ 
He came with a great, in his opinion very smart, idea. (Out of noting as usual after a long blissful silence).
"Mama, papa. Long, long time ago there where two people, a man and a woman. Otherwise there would be no people. They made babyâs.
And yeah, his horrible dry nerdy parents needed to say: âNice idea, put probably the whole story is a bit different.â And the rant started, he asked a few questions, bit silence emerged from behind. (Driving in the car). He felt asleepâŚ
1 Like
14 Likes
My dadâs response to the âbut where do you get your morals, then?â was âSame place as you. From books people wrote.â
10 Likes
That right there is the best thing Iâve heard all day.
Seems to me the headline here is inaccurate: Steve Harvey did not disprove evolution with his âwhy we still got monkeys then?â quip.
Perhaps it should say âSteve Harvey Disapproves of Evolution.â
3 Likes
I totally read the Sithrak storyline as a commentary on the Judeo-Christian god. Especially the later storyline where thereâs a further (possible) revelation in which Sithrak reveals, somewhat embarrassed, that the scripture was the result of a youthful, angry phase, so just ignore all that stuff now as heâs cool. Later, the two missionaries are flogging a newspaper that has a headline, âTree struck by lightning âmust have done somethingâ claims devout arborist.â That sounded so familiarâŚ
11 Likes
Completely OT, Waugh couldnât stand Churchill. When Churchill was investigated for a tumour which turned out to be benign, Waugh wrote congratulating the doctors on âfinding the only bit of Randolph that wasnât malignant.â
8 Likes
It is more than an old joke; it was, in essence, discussed at Vatican 2. My supervisor at the time in sociology of religion remarked to us âWell, there goes the argument in favour of missionaries.â
3 Likes
A lot of the prophets argued that this notion of God was nonsense. A lot of the OT is one lot of theologians disagreeing with another lot of theologians or, as someone described it to me once, âthe Jewish people carrying on an interminable argument.â
The prophets were mostly left wing, members of the âGod just wants you to be good to your neighbours, widows and orphansâ. It was the city priests who liked lots of complicated rules that created lots of occasions to get into trouble and have to pay for a sacrifice. On one reading, Karl Marx was just in the tradition of the Jewish prophets (his grandfather was a rabbi.) I guess if the printing press had been around in the centuries BC, the Bible would come in an awful lot of volumes.
2 Likes
Yikes. Iâve heard that regular NSAIDS donât work very well for moral barometer inflammations. You should have that checked out by a private medical clinic, else you start feeding the poor or arguing publicly for living wages.
5 Likes
Thereâs incontrovertible evidence for the existence of God, although not for the Christian god.
Axiom: God is the greatest thing that exists.
Axiom: No thing that can be contained is greater than that which contains it.
Therefore, God is the sum total of all that can, has been, and will be.
Empirical proof: Touch your nose. OK, Simon says touch your nose. Youâve just demonstrated that God exists using your own sensory apparatus. This experiment is repeatable.
With apologies to Baruch Spinoza, Albert Einstein, and Georg Cantor.
3 Likes
Itâs certainly a handicap, but I think the real problem is that like you said itâs only meant as an argument, and plainly one learned by rote. Youâre not even supposed to consider the response. I do think if it were ever actually meant as a question, they could probably figure out or at least appreciate the answer.
I should think special apologies to Cantor because your proof ignores his math. You more or less defined God to be a superset of everything else, but that there is such a thing doesnât follow from those two axioms. Standard ZF set theory for instance allows an endless series of âgreaterâ sets without any being âgreatestâ, as Cantor found. If thatâs not the supposed to be the case here, youâve made other assumptions.
5 Likes
Good to know.
One of the first exercises for a theology student at the university I went to used to be to expose the flaws in this argument. Unfortunately for the US, theology != âBible Studyâ.
1 Like
I took the post as humorâŚshould I reread?
I took it as such; I only posted a reply in case someone took it seriously. I should probably work on my urge to take things seriously.
1 Like
Sure, Iâve played that game too. The basic flaw is encapsulated by Rene Descartesâ Meditations on First Philosophy* - epistemology is a bottomless hole.
But if you posit that there is value to having a functional concept of God (a position that is very defensible on pragmatic grounds) and that youâd rather not worship any god who purposely torments and misleads you by diddling around with your ability to understand the universe, then the argument works fine for all practical purposes. Pantheism gives you a framework where you can reap the benefits of thousands of years of art and philosophy without suffering the major drawbacks of the less logical religions, such as alienation, human sacrifice, popes, genital mutilation, gender inequality under law, holy war, &etc.
Yup, and special apologies to Einstein for similar reasons. But I donât think thereâs any problem with defining God as limitless; in fact I think that is necessary, given the infinite divisibility of intervals.
Spinozaâs definition of God can be found by compiling all the claims made about god(s) from all religions and philosophies and removing all conflicting claims and all claims made only by a tiny fraction. Defining the word is a linguistic mechanism, which is why itâs an axiom - we have to agree on what we are talking about, because otherwise a mob of naive atheists will insist that everyone has to use their own retarded quasi-biblical definition of god that involves penises, beards or sky-chariots. The more numerous reasonable atheists and agnostics will be drowned out by the din of the naive atheists, who are basically Christian heretics, just like Satanists are.
If we ignore the idea that nothing whatsoever can truly be proven since all our senses can be trivially deceived, I can prove my God exists, easily. Cogito, ergo est, putas, ergo. The act of trying serves the purpose of demonstrating that totality is.
I just canât prove that any of the fake gods exist, like Yahweh and Huitzilopochtli.
You took it correctly! God has a great sense of humor, she isnât offended by jokes.
* Ignore Descartesâ ontological proof, of course, itâs bunk.
7 Likes
I donât think thatâs fair at all. Itâs not just in the bible where most things that get called by the name âgodâ involve stuff of that stature; people use the same word for Zeus, Thor, Krishna, Quetzalcoatl, Tiamat, and lesser powers still. Heck, M. Bison talks about being a god in Street Fighter. You can hardly argue thatâs the biblical version of the word, just because it isnât yours.
Personally I think itâs needlessly confusing to call the whole universe or totality by the same term as such petty entities; were it not for Greek and Christian thinkers gradually expanding their conception of god from one to the other Iâm not sure anyone would want to do so. I understand you think otherwise, and have given some reasons, but please donât say itâs âretardedâ (!) or thoughtlessly Christian-influenced to prefer a common English use that better differentiates the concepts. I mean, seriously.
In any case, though, weâve touched on this before and I didnât really set out to argue it with you. I was instead pointing out that your proof didnât follow either way, and in what I thought was an also-humorous irony, you happened to invoke one of the very people who showed why. You can define your variable names however you like, but I will still say that the math needs to be sound. 
3 Likes
