IMPORTANT

Big thanks to Jill D for pointing this out here.

Jill D wrote:
Ray's blog has added this to the sidebar. It does not appear when you are about the post a comment on Ray's site:

Please note: All comments placed on this site are copyrighted and become the property of Living Waters.

Everything you write is copyright the moment you create it. Yes, even blog comments. The attempt to claim that any comments to him are owned by him is not right. He likes to claim "Fair Use" but that is different to claiming you own the copyright to anything that is said to you.

There is an easy to read run down on US copyright law. It's pretty much the same for most countries in the world. (Thanks to the Berne Convention)

http://blog.v7n.com/2006/03/26/copyright-law-explained/

I call for another strike. This is wrong, illegal, and he's done it very very quietly rather than putting it out in the open. It should not be tolerated. I recommend we all refuse to post until this disclaimer is removed, as we absolutely do not want to give our words to him to use as he will (and we all know how he will use them).

Suffer the Stupid

Dani'el wrote:
So if your knowledge or "science" is in error? it is "science falsely called".

I do believe just a few years ago science held that Pluto was a planet, and even now there is much disagreement.

Oh no! They redefined Pluto! Therefore... *gasp*... all of science must be wrong! The horror!

Forgive me Jee-Man!

A few choise words

Here's a hypothetical situation: Tomorrow, you're hit by a train while crossing the road.

You find yourself before teh awesome, glowing, mustachioed God, exactly as Ray described him, and he lets you know you're going to hell for your sins. But he's feeling in a good mood today, so he'll let you have a few minutes to rant.

What do you say?

Mock The Afflicted #2

Ladies and Gentlemen, roll up, roll up...

Welcome to the show that never disapoints - Ray's Idiot Zoo! A veritable cornucopia of tame morons and imbeciles brought to a single place for your edification and delight.

And who do we have in this week's cage..? Why, it's the Dani 'el, a remarkable creature that possesses such a weak grasp on cause, effect and morality that its opponents become so confused attempting to determine whether any logic exists in his words that he is able to run away and live another day.

Point and laugh, people. Point and laugh...

http://judgmentofsanfrancisco.blogspot.com

"The day after California's courts forced sodomite marriage laws throught the courts, God sent an early season heat wave, followed close behind an unprecedented dry lightning storm that kindled over 800 wildfires in California.

A taste of things to come if San Fransodom and Los Gomorrangeles continue on their current path."

Real Questions Atheists Should Answer

Whenever a Christian asks atheists a series of questions intended to stump, all the questions turn out to be rather shallow. For example: "if humans evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?" We all had fun answering Ray's questions, now let's see how you fare amongst these inquiries.

1) How can there be something instead of nothing? (Not why, but how)?

2) You know you exist (I think therefore I am), but how can you be sure others exist?

3) Can an objective reality truly exist in an existence interpreted or conjured by the mind?

4) How can evolutionary theory account for pre-cellular organic material mutating into stable organisms given the fragile nature of nucleic acids?

5) If all possibilities occur in a quantum universe, will you ever die?

6) What do you believe is the biological basis for consciousness?

7) What is humanity's ultimate place in the universe millions of not billions of years from now?

8) Knowledge can be derived from a near infinite number of sources. Why do atheists tend to gravitate toward scientific reasoning? How can you ever be sure scientific reasoning is the best or only way to address a problem?

9) Why haven't we found intelligent life outside of the solar system yet?

10) Which came first, thought or intelligence?

------ EDIT ------
"Please don't answer "yes" or "no." Explain why.

I'm not going to give you definitions. I purposefully did not so you would have to figure things out like the meaning of 'intelligence' for yourself."

Test Results....

As promised, here are the results from today's test. You all did extremely well and can take the rest of the day off.

The Correct Answers (according to me - feel free to disagree):

1. What was in the beginning?
A: "At the point at which time begins, our best explanation for the evidence we can see is that there was a super-dense point of all the matter and energy in the universe very shortly after it had began to expand." - Baldyslaphead

I also would have accepted; "How the hell should I know?" - Tilia

2. How will life on earth end?
A: "More than likely with the earth be enveloped by the sun as it goes red giant. There is a possibility that the milky way galaxy and thus the earth will be destroyed when it collides with another galaxy." - Beanstalk - Rocky S.

Selected because galaxies colliding is just cool.

3. What happens after death?
A: "Nothing. Nonexistence. Blissful oblivion. I'm actually rather looking forward to it." - Tripmaster Monkey

"Always look on the bright side of life, dee-do dee-do dee-do..."

4. What is the purpose of existence?
A: "We're just transportation for our genes. How we spend our life's is up to us." - Tilia

Short and sweet

5. Why there is order in all of creation?
A: "Is there? Hadn't noticed." - Liz

Short and sweet too

6. Why there is morality in every civilization?
A: "It probably arose because species that co-operated were more successful at breeding than those that did not. Beyond the mere existence of *a* morality, there is no *universal* morality anyway." - Baldyslaphead

Have you been looking at the answers sheet?

7. Why does every civilization believe in a Creator?
A: "Man naturally anthropomorphizes natural forces, such as lady luck and father time, as a primitive way to deal with a world they don't understand completely, or to sublimate another emotion (for instance, smacking a television to "convince" it to work)." - Rex Mundane

Funny because it's true, and the right answer (apparently)

8. Why does every sane person have a conscience, even when it is not dictated by society?
A: "For the same reason that every sane person has legs even though they're not dictated by society." - Baldyslaphead

You lose half a mark because some people have no legs, the full answer is:

A: "See "Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins." - Theshaggy

A good example of citing your sources

9. How did nothing create everything?
A: "It didn't." - Nonmagic

Bam!

10. Which came first--the chicken or the egg?
A: "Exactly" - Liz

Eggsactly

I would also have accepted 'God' or 'Godditit' for any answer. I would....but I'm not an intellectually stunted Creationist, so I won't.

Scores:

Liz: 9/10
Theshaggy: 9/10
Beamstalk - rocky s: 9/10
Rex Mundane: 9/10
Nonmagic: 9/10
Tripmaster Monkey: 9/10
Baldyslaphead: 8.5/10
Tripmaster Monkey Mk2: 0/10 - see me.
Tilia: 9/10

Special credit for Bob (for not knowing anything), Froggie (for the chicken-egg joke) and Charles (so he doesn't spill the beans about the great Atheist Conspiracy).

Kaitlyn: no answers = no points for you.

Well done everyone, we've answered 'The 10 Questions Atheists Can't Answer'....what's next?

Keeping Ray busy

Ray announced an atheist-bible.

http://raycomfortfood.blogspot.com/2008/10/good-news-for-atheists.html

To quotemine his subheadline:

... 10% of the world's population claim atheism. ...

That are 600,000,000 people. So an atheist bible would need to contain the ideas of 600,000,000 people.

If he would want to write this book, this would keep him quite busy...
... which actually is not such a bad idea....

Mock the Afflicted

Ladies and Gentlemen, roll up, roll up...

Welcome to the show that never disapoints - Ray's Idiot Zoo! A veritable cornucopia of tame morons and imbeciles brought to a single place for your edification and delight.

And who do we have in this week's cage..? Why, it's the McHue, a creature that is able to force its enemies to face/palm themselevs to death.

Point and laugh, people. Point and laugh...

Jinx McHue said...

Lots of pretty silly answers from the resident atheists, but this one takes the cake:

"A chicken-like creature laid the egg of a chicken. The chicken egg came first."

So when Ray asks things like, "Show me a dog giving birth to a cat," he's actually being 100% accurate according to evolutionary thinking. "Chicken-like" creatures can "give birth" to chickens, so "cat-like" creatures (dogs have the same general shape as cats) can give birth to cats.

Rebuttal for "Creation from nothing"

Dear Ray!

Saying that all atheists believe in creation from nothing is wrong. Please consider a rebuttal for what many atheists really believe in:


What was in the beginning?:
Chaos

What will be in the end?:
Chaos

It's really amazing how advanced the school of though was in Ancient Greece.

The Greek believed in a creation from Chaos. (We have the word "Chaos" from them)
In Greek mythology this Chaos gave birth to the first gods who then created the Cosmos (the order, in the Greek understanding the Cosmos stood against the Chaos.

The Ancient Greek had no understanding of advanced physics and therefor had to make the mistake with the Gods. If the Greek would have known the stunning simplicity of the universe shortly after its formation I guess they would have become formidable atheists.

In a time-bound universe you need to have a beginning (and an end). The Indians (South Asia) thought up the idea that time is an everyspinning wheel. (Which actually begs the question who made it spin)
If you don't have a universe in a time-loop you have the problem of what was before.
You have 3 principle options how this could happen.
a) Creation from nothing: Nothing causes nothing. If nothing would cause something it wouldn't have been nothing.
b) Creation from a static entity (God). Before the universe there was no time. Without time there is no movement or change. An entity that does not move can't create. It would be 'frozen' in a timeless existence.
And if there was a non-moving entity (God) why did it create the universe about 6000 years ago? Why not 5 minutes earlier?
If this entity (God) was everlasting, why did it wait to create the universe?
What caused it to create the universe after an infinity of waiting? -Keep in mind that it was the only thing existing and a cause would need to be an external influence on the system.

what lasts is option 3:
Creation from Chaos
A perfect Chaos can't have a cause since a cause would be an impossition on this Chaos that would spoil it. A Chaos is defined as a system that is without rules applying to it or a system upon an infinte number of orders apply.
A little experiment of though:
Imagine your desk: You bring your order to this desk. Then comes another person and adds his order to your desk, and then a this person who adds her order to the desk too... and so on. Just imagine your desk after lets say 100 persons adding their orders to it.... it will already look pretty untidy.

The great thing about a Chaos - that's existing - is that everything can happen. If not everything could happen it wouldn't be perfectly chaotic. The more complex the things are that happen the less likely they become. If you throw dice the chance that you throw a one is 1 to 6. The chance that you throw 10 ones in a row is 1 to 60,466,176. And a perfect chaos would keep on throwing dice forever...

At one point in this process of throwing dice it had to end up with the singularity and the physical laws who gave birth to our universe.

- And since the Greek did understand logic but not physics as we do today they had to end up with simple Gods who then created the further order that we see today

Our universe still ressembles it's creator - the Chaos -: The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. On the grand scheme entropy always increases. (Which does not mean that entropy can't decrease in local systems upon the entropic cost of its environment - see your fridge). Entropy is a messurement of thermic disorder. The higher the entropy the higher the disorder. And with every moment the entropy of the universe increases.
The universe was given birth by Chaos and it will end in Chaos.

Questions that Ray thinks he knows the answers to...

So, apparently we atheists are incapable of answering the following questions:

1. What was in the beginning?
2. How will life on earth end?
3. What happens after death?
4. What is the purpose of existence?
5. Why there is order in all of creation?
6. Why there is morality in every civilization?
7. Why does every civilization believe in a Creator?
8. Why does every sane person have a conscience, even when it is not dictated by society?
9. How did nothing create everything?
10. Which came first--the chicken or the egg?

I would say that anyone can answer the questions, the problem is that fundies, like Ray, are under the impression that their answers are the right answers. Nothing like marking your own work to get a high score, eh?

But I am interested;

What are your answers?

I will be marking them and you'll be given grades according to your responses. Those not achieving a passing grade will stay behind after class to copy, by hand, the complete works of Ray Comfort...

You may begin.

Want to improve your bible knowlegde?

Check out this page:
The Brick Testament

Edit: Don't check the page at work. You might end up loosing the day...

Staring out the window
Street lights illuminate
Red eyes of an insomniac
I can't kill the dreams
With Vodka shots and Proza

Here's just a little quickie. I was listening to a favorite radio show of mine (Ron & Fez) this weekend when they replay stuff from the week. They talked to Shirley Phelps-Roper because Ron likes to egg her on. (And she never catches on that he's doing this)

The part that I found amusing was after she hung up, and I'm probably paraphrasing this here, Ron commented saying "Even if Obama being elected does bring about the apocalypse, he'd only be known as the second worst president in the history of America."

More Humour

Todays Sluggy Freelance.

There goes my reputation...

...my reputation as a calm, logical debater, that is.

Here's the relevant snippet from the ongoing debate/argument.

Scmike wrote:
"How does the universe account for absolute, universal, immaterial laws of logic and reason when these characteristics do not correspond with the universe??"

Quasar replied:

AAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGHHH!!!!!

OB! JEC! TIVE!

YOUR CATCHPHRASE VERSION OF LOGIC DOESN'T FREAKING EXIST!

EITHER SHOW THAT IT DOES, OR STOP USING IIIIIIIT!!!!!!

*ahem*

Excuse me.

Wow. Multiple personality disorder, maybe? I went nuts. I didn't think I'd resort to that. Not since last time.

PS: How do you pronounce that guys name? "Smike"? "Shmike"? "Skmike"? "Stupid Cretin Milking Incomphensible Logic Empty"?

Atheism on Buses

I don't know whether anyone has seen this or not but I found it interesting.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7681914.stm

Apparently the British Humanist Association has raised money to run atheist slogans on buses.

"The BHA planned only to raise £5,500, which was to be matched by Professor Dawkins, but it has now raised more than £36,000 of its own accord. "

"The complete slogan reads: "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life." As the campaign has raised more than anticipated, it will also have posters on the inside of buses as well. "

Theological Question:

Does growing up in a family in which you are your own father count as growing up in a dysfunctional family?

Dan the Dipshit

Dan the Debunker is being an immature asshole. On Amazon.com, Dan has inserted a picture of himself under the book Why I Became an Atheist by John W. Loftus. He attached the following caption to the picture:

Are you sure you want to go down the path John chose? Eternity is a very long time, you do understand. Your choice, the religion of atheism or follow the Creator of all called Christianity.

Instead of actually purchasing the book and writing an honest review, Dan is using scare tactics to hurt the sales of the book. On his blog, Debunking Christianity, Loftus points out that sales of the book have gone down since the image was uploaded.

And my book is being attacked quite a bit on Amazon. There are three poor reviews of it from Christians who never even read it, one calling me a "liar" simply because I deny the existence of God. On the 17th of this month my book was ranked around 3,000th but a Christian placed an image there and slowly it dropped to 22,000th by today.

Thus, I would like to ask Dan to do the right thing and please delete the photo and the caption. If you've read the book and find the arguments to be weak, then write a review stating your case. If you have not read it, then it is intellectually dishonest of you to comment on the book or the arguments it presents. Trying to scare people into not purchasing the book with threats of Hell is immature. 

Update:  The photo has been removed from Amazon. Hopefully, Dan was kind enough to remove it. BTW, I think you owe Mr. Loftus an apology. 

I don't even know what to say about this video. Seriously. Loss for words here.

It's not her politics that bother me. Vote for whomever the hell you want, but please have solid, well thought out and LOGICAL reasons for why you are voting for the candidate that you are supporting.

This woman has none of the above.

More Atheistic Media

This clip is from the movie, "The Adventures of Mark Twain." Mark Twain, as you will recall, ridiculed Christianity in many of his works. The writers based this movie on Twain's characters, stories, and philosophy.

Here is a scene that helped me to become an atheist: