1. A force for good?

Comment #55043 by Roland Deschain on July 9, 2007 at 9:02 pm

I would love to shred this piece of pointless waste of harddrive space, but the comments over at the Guardian have done a somewhat decent job.

The one thing that pops right out though in the common motif of clouding your faith in obscurity. When you cannot defend God in any other way, redefine him/her/it in vacuous statements, nebulous metaphors to the point that the thus defined God is completely pointless. Naturally, the next step is to invoke the Bible in one sense or other, immediately reverting back to the anthropomorphic God, so that it is actually possible to make any subsequent claims. Unfortunately, that God is open to the countless criticisms which forced the author to originally revert back to the vacuous definition of God. Oh, the joy of desperate wanna-be theologians.

And here is the offending passage, a perfect illustration of how far a few books have driven back God when he is exposed to critical minds, rather than the uneducated masses ready to believe anything:

"I start with a sense that there is purpose in existence. That we are connected to something bigger than ourselves. That we find greater fulfilment by relating to that and by seeking the shimmer of transcendence. God is not an "invisible being" who "commands, rewards or punishes. God is not to me a particular "being" at all, but rather the power of Being itself. God is a supreme moral ideal to be reverenced for its value not for its controlling power."

2. Interview with Richard Dawkins

Comment #50743 by Roland Deschain on June 19, 2007 at 7:10 pm

God-darn-it, why do people think that if Darwin renounced his theory, it must automatically be void.

Next up, it is found that Newton had doubts about his three laws and renounced them in the last 10 minutes of his life in a delusional fervor, therefore the last 300 years of physics are null and we have to go back to God Did It.

3. Sen. Clinton: Faith got me through marital strife

Comment #47864 by Roland Deschain on June 5, 2007 at 8:34 pm

Now the real question is, which one of them (if any) is faking blind faith so as to have a realistic chance at the presidency?

4. In the beginning

Comment #33919 by Roland Deschain on April 22, 2007 at 5:14 pm

"While rejecting American-style intelligent design, some authoritative Catholic thinkers claim to see God's hand in "convergence": the apparent fact that, as they put it, similar processes and structures are present in organisms that have evolved separately."

Awww, watching theologians trying to interpret science for their own preconceived notions is always so adorable. Convergence is quite easily explained through evolutionary mechanisms and does in no imaginable way require the added dead-weight of a God.

I'm afraid that the Catholic Church is no different that Intelligent Design at this point. Trying desperately and needlessly to inject the notion of God into scientific concept.

5. Militant atheists: too clever for their own good

Comment #30076 by Roland Deschain on April 6, 2007 at 11:26 pm

What a fucking asshole.

To follow his reasoning: atheists make very strong and forceful arguments --> they are not afraid to say that the arguments of the opposition are nigh to non-existent --> therefore, atheists are elitist who assume that the rest of the population are sniveling idiots.

"It therefore matters not only how we reason, but how we feel, how we act towards others, how we speak, sing, dance, laugh, cry, eat and wash, how we die, how we pray and how we love. Does anything in our actual human experience tell us that clever people do these things better than anyone else?"

Of course not, you fucking asshole. I know people that have barely finished high school that are kind and loving. I know people with three doctorates who are utter emotionless assholes. But that people "speak, sing, dance, laugh, cry, eat and wash, ... die, and love" gives no credence to their argument that God exists. The ability to cry does not qualify you to be a doctor without training, why should it qualify you to state that God exists.

And the final insult (and the reason for all the swearing): "The Crucifixion and the Resurrection are just as distasteful for Richard Dawkins as for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, because they subvert the idea that man is at his greatest when he is most strong, masterful and clever". Dear sir, with all due respect, fuck you. Fuck you and your seedy, insulting and childish taunts.

I do apologize for the language, but very rarely do I see such utter trash bubble up to the light.

6. Happy 66th Birthday, Richard Dawkins!

Comment #27636 by Roland Deschain on March 25, 2007 at 9:46 pm

Happy Birthday.

PS: Love the picture of Pope Benedict reading The God Delusion.

7. Scientist Finds the Beginnings of Morality in Primate Behavior

Comment #26628 by Roland Deschain on March 20, 2007 at 6:22 pm

^
So aren't all religious ideas then based on the "genetic" fallacy?

8. US TV Commercial for The God Delusion during Countdown with Keith Olbermann

Comment #26500 by Roland Deschain on March 19, 2007 at 9:59 pm

"Join the debate."

I do like the simple message. Stop ignoring this overarching issue :D.

Here is Canada, we're trying to start the debate on the issue of Catholic Schools, and predictably the Catholic School Board is doing its best to stop any debate from even starting. They know perfectly well that their position is entirely unjustifiable.

9. UK Christians 'suffer for faith'

Comment #26348 by Roland Deschain on March 18, 2007 at 8:01 pm

I love how the religious right sets up win-win situations for themselves: Aggressive secularists. So I shouldn't be forceful in my believes that a secular society is the only stable form of society or I should just abandon my secular convictions.

I think this type of thinking is just another vestigial remnant of 2000 years in which it was impossible to question people's foolish believes. And heated argument is not aggressive; the Inquisition was aggressive, the wanton discrimination against gays is aggressive, the blind condemnation against abortion and contraception is aggressive.

10. Houses of the Holy

Comment #24102 by Roland Deschain on March 4, 2007 at 7:56 pm

God helps those who get out of paying taxes and horde the donations of the blindly faithful. Isn't organized religion grand.

11. Faith

Comment #23006 by Roland Deschain on February 25, 2007 at 8:56 pm

"Last November the Archbishop of Canterbury gave a lecture in which he distinguished between programmatic and procedural secularism. The former meant that in the public domain, everybody had to silence their fundamental convictions and debate in a value-free atmosphere of public neutrality. For Williams, this was a hopeless way of carrying on public discourse in a bewildering society that embraced not only many faiths but many anti-faith positions, and in which real disputes over very different values needed to take place. Better was procedural secularism, which promised that different groups could at least converse with each other in public discussions over sensitive questions of value and policy."

You cannot converse when there is even a tint of religious dogma in the arguments. How are we to distinguish between the Christian dogma or the Muslim dogma? It cannot be done through reason, as the core of the dogma is faith, and that is beyond reason. So stop trying to subdivide secularism (smells a lot like the subdivide of microevolution/macroevolution and historical science/empirical science done due to conflicts with religion). Secularism is not based on moral relativism and it's not based on an absolute totem of moral certainty. It's based on reason and evidence, a domain that all of us, regardless of our core dogmas, can take part in.

It is just sad that when reason and evidence contradict the dogmas of one group of people, they inevitably demand that reason and evidence be thrown out the window so that their cherished believes can be treated with kid's gloves. If a religious person cannot find evidence for his/her convictions besides the cop-out of faith (or the hilariously inaccurate holy scripture of choice), why should anybody pay them any attention.

If I sound harsh, tough luck. My believes are utterly open to attack as they are based on reason. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same of the guy who demands that gays are evil because a 2000 year old book said so (but when the same book says that the Earth is 6000 years old, it must be taken metaphorically, of course).

12. The God Delusion

Comment #21734 by Roland Deschain on February 10, 2007 at 8:10 pm

^
Exactly. All the criticism focuses on how Dawkins did not address moderns theology, but no theologians seems to want to say WHAT these modern theological arguments are!

(Of course, there is no modern theology. It's simply a more muddled and obtuse version of ancient theological arguments.

13. Interview with Alister McGrath, author of 'The Dawkins Delusion?'

Comment #20814 by Roland Deschain on February 6, 2007 at 5:17 pm

I agree.

Overshadowing this whole article is Nigel McCullough never stating why he actually believes in God. True to form, he takes the theological shortcut, quoting some non-nonsensical Lewis metaphor and moves on.