Yeah, but none of you will be laughing when Jesus blows up your cities and burns you alive while he smashes down buildings and mountains like Godzilla.

Aha! Jesus is a man in a rubber suit. Why didn't I think of that?

Woah ... I've never had a blog thread cause me to rethink my
assumptions on so fundamental an issue as my own belief structure.

You know why? No trolls! It's all meat and potatoes, leavened (so to speak) with a little wiseguyisms. Ah, the joy.

And as the possible last thought in this thread, I saw a bumper sticker today. It said "God was my co-pilot. But we crashed in the mountains and I had to eat him."

That guy is definitely going to hell.

craigie:

With death ray eyes burning like red hot coals of righteousness as he blasts the wicked with another awe-inspiring pulse of gamma radiation ...

Jezilla vs Sathra !

Bob

Yeah, but none of you will be laughing when Jesus blows up your cities and burns you alive while he smashes down buildings and mountains like Godzilla. When the Lord Jesus Christ shoots the hellfire into the office buildings of the Godless and the heathens he will scream and rage at the sinful and the wicked, and the millions will perish calling for mercy.

I hope you didn't just ruin the ending of Left Behind for us.

If we're going with a Norwegian theme for the potluck, we'll be needing a good honey mead to bring good cheer and stave off the fear of being crisped to death by Mecha-Jesus.

Given a wager about whether God exists or not, the only reasonable bet to make is that he does not. It's infinitely more likely that God, like so many other supernatural things, is just a figment of the human imagination. The universe and Earth got along fine without us and the concept of God before we came along, and after we're gone the concept of God will vanish with us.

Bob - I was being a smartass, as is my wont. My kids went to catholic school. My son, now an adult, says (jokingly) that he doesn't like protestants because he hates quitters.

And we need lefse at the potluck, don't you know...

Dang. all this time I thought you were Irish, only to learn you're Norweigan. So it goes.

I'm getting a little depressed here. What's with the piling on? You all do realize that atheism and liberalism are not inseperable? And Christianity and theocratic facism are actually incompatible? Given my earlier failure to reduce Thomistic metaphysics to a paragraph long entry I am not going to get into details, but come on. Believe it or not some of us Christians actually try to practice the gospels, and are fairly intelligent (UCB high honors). So give me a break.

As to any threatened supernatural punishments for us non-believers, haven't theists got anything better to do than make things up to frighten the children? I know that death is merely an end, but Christians and Muslims promise eternal hellfire after death to non-believers, which is just sadistic and terribly manipulative of young naive minds. All you're doing is creating generation after generation of bigots with the claim that your faith is the only "way". The intolerance shown the Jews for thousands of years demonstrates what terrible things are justified for the sake of such theistic claims. There's nothing stopping anyone from living a good life without religion. Nothing at all.

LW Phil:

Oh, I don't think (or certainly hope) that nobody thinks less of you or any believer for your faith. I certainly don't.

Sane religious people are indispensible to fight of the religious right and get the values crowd away from gay bashing and disenfranchising women ...

If the Democrats don't learn how to talk about faith, we'll never start winning national majorities again ...

Bob

Thanks Bob, feeling a little lonely here.

Global:

I am also, as Frank Zappa terms it, an escaped Catholic.

I had one seriously nasty old nun doing our Confirmation prep in CCD, and that's all it took.

"Do YOU know what Jesus did for YOUUUUUU ?" shaking a crooked finger, face in a scowl, dripping with bitterness.

No thank you, ma'am.

Bob

LW Phil:

Well it *is* a thread about atheists and Muslims, Phil :)

But politically, we Democrats seriously need to take back the values themes that the Republicas have exploited. It's not an option.

Bob

You all do realize that atheism and liberalism are not inseperable?

Yes we do. Because otherwise, there wouldn't be many liberals.

Don't be put out - we're just jumping around on the bed, throwing pillows. We don't get to come out much, that's all. People think we're even worse than those crazy Muslims, fer chrissakes!

Phil:

Craigie's right, Phil. It's like a Halloween party or something. Or a gay bar after hours.

We're a marginalized minority in a country where around 70% believe in the literal existence of guardian angels ...

And besides which ... *somebody's* got to take the lead in the plot to steal Christmas from the Christians ...

Bob

I was just blasting Frank Zappa through the lab and getting strange looks from my co-workers. Fortunately the "normal" people leave by 11:30...

Instead of a potluck, lets meet at St. Alphonso's for a pancake breakfast. Pale Rider can steal the margarine (pronounced margarEEN.)

Or a gay bar after hours.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

But politically, we Democrats seriously need to take back the values themes that the Republicas have exploited. It's not an option.

Seriously. I have many friends who hold their noses and vote Republican because of abortion. They hear my rants about Fallouja (sp) and white phosphorus, crony capitalism, and insane divine guidance for an incompetent twit, but cannot reconcile what they feel is murder. I argue that we don't want to return to the days of coat hangars, but it still grates. I may never post here again, but I have to be honest.

Where she abused the sausage patty
And said "why don't you treat me mean?"

Dutta dade daa, do da de da dat da ...

Craziest string of sixteeth notes (synth, horns and xylophone in unison) ever recorded on a rock record. When I first heard that my jaw dropped to the fucking floor.

Nothing else compared .... until ... The Black Page :)

Bob

LW Phil:

Nothing wrong with honesty, bro. Nobody "likes" abortion as if it were a good in itself.

Even us atheist/agnostics who don't have "sanctity of all human life" dictum to jar our consciences. It's a nasty place for anyone to have to be, because we all have ethics and we all believe that society should protect the weak and helpless.

Bob

I was about 14, and a freshman in Catholic school myself. I went to a houseparty and someone played their older siblings copy of Joes Garage and when I heard for the first time, it blew my mind and corrupted me forevermore. Thank a God that doesn't exist!

If we're going with a Norwegian theme for the potluck, we'll be needing a good honey mead to bring good cheer and stave off the fear of being crisped to death by Mecha-Jesus.

If we're going with the Norwegian theme, let's go all out and bring on Ragnarok.

Don't be put out - we're just jumping around on the bed, throwing pillows. We don't get to come out much, that's all. People think we're even worse than those crazy Muslims, fer chrissakes!

Maybe we should tell Amy Sullivan that. She thinks us atheists are too off-putting to Christians to be the sort of Democrats she wants in her party. Shall we then adopt a policy of "don't ask, don't tell" regarding the presence of atheists in Democratic ranks, Amy? Because Amy, you have the good fortune to be able to combine your faith with your politics in public, while I can't without being admonished by the likes of you about it. Maybe it is time for atheists to just stop supporting Democrats instead of being taken for granted and swept under the big tent's rug.

So long as we have plenty of Aqua Vit I can handle even lefse.

Global:

I love the instrumental section of Wet T-Shirt Nite.

And of course, who could forget the plangent strains of Magical Pig:

"Fuck me, you ugly sonovabitch -- you ug-ly son of a bitch"

The best disco parody *ever* conceived :)

Bob

LW Phil,
The abortion question works both ways. There are many people who support the war, hate the poor, hate black people and Mexicans, hate unions and vote Democratic because they support abortion rights. I know some. In fact, when pollsters ask people what their most important issue is, abortion never chimes in at more than 4%. And of those 4%, more vote pro-choice than pro-life. Most people who vote pro-life Republican are pro-life for the wrong reasons - they hate the sexual revolution and the independence it gave women. They don't really care about unborn babies. Note that about 24% of the votes to most Democrats comes from self-described "pro-lifers".

Global

It was a Model XQJ Nuclear Powered Pan-Sexual Roto-Plooker ... it looked like a cross between a chrome piggy bank and a vacuum cleaner with marital aids stuck all over it ...

Bob

A Zappa fan...I just knew I liked you from square one!!!

So long as we have plenty of Aqua Vit I can handle even lefse.

Are you kidding? Lefse is tasty. Have you ever tried lutefisk?

I used to live between Moon Unit and Dweezil. Nice people.

Global:

This is a song 'bout bald-headed John
Dong work for yuda, dong dong
He talks a lot and he's us'lly wrong
Dong work for yuda, dong dong

Bartender, get me a colada 'n' milk
On second thought, make that a waduh -- HTO
Driver -- McDoodle
I wave my bags, you wave your'n?
Well how much did they wave?
I need a dud'n taals so da boys kin take a sheaoh
That girl mus' be pracketing richcraft
I studied with da Dong of Tokyo 'n' th' Oriental Cato
Make way for da ihnnn schashich
That look like that stuff Freckles lets out once a momf ...

Bob

Fish cured in lye? Can't say I've ever had the nerve.

By the way, I've moved beyond Zappa tonight and now I'm freaking out the co-workers with The Hillbilly VooDoo Dolls. Gotta keep 'em guessing.

One of them asked me yesterday "You don't have any Sean Cassidy in your collection, do you?"

I replied that I would rather be set on fire.

It was a Model XQJ Nuclear Powered Pan-Sexual Roto-Plooker

I thought it was a stratocaster with a whammy bar...

Lutefisk? Lefse? Aqua Vit? Jeeze -- this is the stuff of the Annual White Elephant Party in Ballard (Seattle)! Not to mention the Ballard Seafood Festival!!! I knew I was on the right blog!!!!!!!!!!!

You are all sooooooooo much fun. Oh...and smart. Did I say smart???? Smart. Very Smart. :) :)

LW Phil:

Lutefish, OMFG ... my soon-to-be stepsister is Norwegian and her dad runs a catering business ... Lutefish is the most disgusting foodstuff on the face of the planet. The stink is supposed to last for, like, months :(

You actually, like, ran into Moon and Dweezil shopping 'n' stuff? Or did you just know that they lived in the neighborhood?

Valley Girl was amazing. She improvised those rambles pretty much on the spot.

Bag those toenails !

Bob

If you're looking for a good argument that God, as defined in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, does not exist, it's hard to go wrong with the argument from evil.

Namely, evil exists -- much of it evil that can't be traced back to the actions of human beings. For example, there have been many completely innocent babies who have died horrible deaths due to entirely natural causes, such as disease, earthquakes, etc. Clearly if God is omnipotent and omniscient, he would have known about these events in advance and could have stopped them. He did not. Only an evil being would refuse to do so -- we would count a human being who refused to help when he easily might have as the most horrible of monsters. Therefore God Himself must be evil, whence the God of the Judaeo-Christian theology can't exist.

Q.E.D.

Of course, people come to the defense of God here, claiming that He's somehow above all these considerations for one reason or another, but any sensible person will realize that you don't turn evil into good by talking up the perpetrator.

obscure: How can you forget the Fender Champ?!?! (Still the best amp out there!)

According to Douglas Adams, God, confronted with the evidence he did not exist, disappeared in a puff of logic.

According to Douglas Adams, God, confronted with the evidence he did not exist, disappeared in a puff of logic.

And the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything is...42!

"Forty-two!" yelled Loonquawl. "Is that all you've got to show for seven and a half million years' work?"

"I checked it very thoroughly," said the computer, "and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've never actually known what the question is."

You actually, like, ran into Moon and Dweezil shopping 'n' stuff?

Moon lived 1 block west of us. She bought a friend of our's house. Dweezil lived two blocks east. His house was much cooler (elevated tennis court). Neither one was very social. Typical LA. Alex Karras livewd across the street. Lovely man.

LW Phil,

I'm rummaging around for some encouraging words...

Here is a (probably faulty) paraphrase of the great Thomas H. Huxley aka 'Darwin's Bulldog:'

Science concerns itself with the measurable and the provable. The realm of religion, on the other hand, concerns questions of how we should live and how we should treat each other.

Huxley was intimately familiar with the Bible and he wrote some brilliant essays assessing the nature and coherence of the gospels. But afaik, despite his sharp criticism of Christianity as a 'logical story' he remained a Christian himself. He was content to understand Christianity as having little to do with claims of 'truth' and 'knowledge.'

to be quite honest with you, is that you've never actually known what the question is."

Pretty much sums up the human condition, don't you think?

And now, duty calls. Damned patients! If they would just listen a lot of us would be (gratefully) unemployed!

Frankly0:

Well, the first big-time solution to the theodicy problem (after the Gnostics) was St. Augustine's doctrine of Original Sin.

Straight from Adam to you, transmitted through semen. Yes, yes, all those horribly suffering innocent babes suffer because Man inherited his Depraved Nature from none other than the first fruit snacker himself.

Of course, Protestants solved the problem with the doctrine of Free Will: Creation is a *test*, you see. Why would God create perfect beings with no evil? He likes to be *entertained*, so he made life a Cosmic Game where the task is to navigate through all this digusting shit and keep your soul (not to mention dignity) intact ...

Either way, theodicy still stands as a problem for me. As I said upthread, God is either tragically flawed or a cosmic sadist.

Bob

Global,

Two more memorable names-of-rock-n-roll-bands:

-Gay Bikers on Acid (my personal favorite)
-The Dog-Faced Hermans

Global:

Well there's always The Lunachicks and their classic disk (actually the cover is what's classic) Babysitters On Acid

And, one of my favorite thrash-funk-punk-jazz outfits, The Screaming Headless Torsos

Bob

I have always been partial to "Walter trout and the Free Radicals" as a name for a band.

Of course, there is Kansas City favorite "Sister Mary Rotten Crotch" with the motto on all of their paraphernelia "If you wanted it tight, you shoulda brought a bigger dick!"

And I think it's official...we have morphed into a music thread.

And a local favorite (of about -- gods -- 20 years ago) Leather Studded Diaphragm

Bob

The absence of trolls on this thread is perhaps the most convincing evidence for a personal God that I've ever encountered.

Is this what heaven is like?

A whole thread and not one answer to my question of the Christians who were being persecuted by atheists.

Though we could show lots of stories about atheists being made to sing Christian carols, read or answer questions about Christian myths, being made to pledge under god, to a god, or to pray to some diety.

There's no difference between saying, 'I won't vote for a black person, because I prefer to vote for someone who shares my values' from 'I won't vote for an atheist, because I prefer to vote for someone who shares my values.'

It's still bigotry.

rmck1,

Yeah, the problem of theodicy really can just be turned on its head and in effect used as an argument against God. That is, theodicy takes the view that God, omnipotent, omniscient, and all Good has, however, allowed for the existence of evil, and tries to account for that fact. But the argument from evil simply takes the argument the opposite direction (kind of a modus tolens), asserting that since evil exists, God can't.

Now the problem for the Judaeo-Christians is that all their "explanations" sound only worse than the thing they're trying to explain away. Original Sin? Blaming an infant who has never done ANYTHING wrong for the evils an ancestor perpetrated? Not cool.

And how does the unnecesary suffering of innocent child ever turn into a good simply because someone somewhere might be "tested" by it? Yeah, they ought to have their faith "tested" by it, since it's so obviously evil what has happened to the child. The problem is that the suffering that that child has endured is simply evil in its own right; it can't be turned to anything else by context or excuses or anything else.

ChixSox:Really? If you mean that you consider it so unlikely that it's not worth thinking about, fine; but how can you not be curious about the (alternative) answer to life, the universe, etc.?

i was curious about the alternative answer to how we got here, and how the universe came into being. and the more i learned about geology, geography, astronomy and physics, the less sense having some diety start the whole thing made to me. i look at pictures from the Hubble telescope (esp the deep field galaxy) and it reminds me what a very very small part of everything any individual human being is. so why would there be a god who gives a crap about me on a day to day basis? but as Bob wrote in his longer post upthread, i'm not about to dismiss any one else's experience. another person can believe what s/he believes and as long as it gives her/him comfort, and s/he doesn't try to kill me cuz i don't share that belief, i'm fine with it.

course, the answer to life the universe and everything is 42

Are you kidding? Lefse is tasty. Have you ever tried lutefisk?

had lefse, only smelled lutefisk. at least they told me it was lutefisk, i didn't come any closer.

Tolerance will never work with these bible thumping shitheads. Atheists don't feel the need to converge under some message handed down through generations of clueless humans. I like to think for myself and wouldn't generally agree on a lot of things with other athestis outside the fact that god doesn't exist. Hence, we are weakened by the nature of the current structure of government/politicial system which is (supposedly) based on popular will. The populus is too easily manipulated and blind to be fair.

frankly0:

Well sure. This is a big part of why I'm agnostic. But it's also less than perfectly adequate to try to understand these issues on a philosophical blackboard. A sociological explanation is the only real way to make human sense of it.

Elaine Pagels is very interesting on Augustine and Origina Sin. Her contention is that Christianity changed after Constantine converted. Now you had all these imperial soldiers slaughtering people, so how do you square it with the official state religion? Original Sin was the perfect excuse. The story of Genesis effectively becomes a story of human bondage -- bondage to Sin -- rather than human freedom, which it was in earlier Christian and Hebrew tradition. Read her Adam, Eve and the Serpent for a fascinating take on how that story evolved through Church history.

As for Free Will, well it squares theodicy but at the huge expense of making God look like an egomaniac narcissist. He creates these special pockets of Hell on Earth for most people just so the small few who can rise above it. Luck helps a great deal here -- but it's rechrisened as Grace. And it's all for the Greater Glory of You Know Who.

I find that morally unacceptible in the worst way.

Bob

Chisoxfan,

You write:

"It's almost as if there's a variety of viewpoints in our 'camp', such that maybe the 99% of us who don't care if you put a Nativity display on your front lawn shouldn't be held responsible for the 1% who do."

The issue for atheists (and adherents of religions other than Christianity) isn't whether you put a nativity scene on your lawn. As you say, probably 99% don't care (check your CC&R's, though).

The issue is whether or not government entities should be endorsing one religion over another by putting a creche on the courthouse lawn or requiring a daily prayer in a public school. I don't think atheists can afford to accede to such state-sponsored establishments of religion, and should indeed be militant about asserting their distinctly minority, but entirely constitutional views.

Even the inclusion of "under god" in the pledge is, by design, a slap in the face of non-Christian or non-religious students. It was legislatively levered into the pledge during the red scare, and if we had a Congress or a Supreme Court with any intellectual honesty it could be levered right out again.

I find it sad that atheists who defend these principles are portrayed as intolerant and rabid attackers of Christianity when, in reality, it is non-believers who are constantly under assault in this society.

Just got here, and spent the last half hour reading this thread from the top. Had to get on my two cents about this atheist v agnostic spat.

Theists believe in a god. They are not gods. Atheists do not believe in a god. They are not non-gods. The epistemology of the word agnostic is: gnostic (knowledge), a (without). So an agnostic is without knowledge of a god. Therefore unless said agnostic is entirely illogical, he (or she) would not believe in a god, and thus must also be an atheist. The terms seem by this analysis to be interchangeable.

For those agnostics in the crowd, are you agnostic about the existence of invisible, immaterial elephants that constantly gnaw on your flesh but reconstruct it so that you don't feel anything?

Negative atheism is the claim that it is, given the balance of evidence, unreasonable to assert that God exists much like it is unreasonable to assert that such elephants exist.

Positive atheism is the claim that the notion of "God is incoherent" and we can be certain in its non-existence.

For example, we can be certain that no triangle has more or less than three sides. It is an incoherent notion (like a square circle, which we also know does not exist).

If it can be shown that the concept of God is such that it is incoherent (like the claim that "that bachelor is married"), then we can be certain that that being, so described, does not exist.

There's no difference between saying, 'I won't vote for a black person, because I prefer to vote for someone who shares my values' from 'I won't vote for an atheist, because I prefer to vote for someone who shares my values.'

Yeah, there is. A religion is at least nominally a collection of, largely, value propositions, whereas a race is not. They might both be wrong, but they are considerably different qualitatively.

As for Free Will, well it squares theodicy but at the huge expense of making God look like an egomaniac narcissist. He creates these special pockets of Hell on Earth for most people just so the small few who can rise above it. Luck helps a great deal here -- but it's rechrisened as Grace. And it's all for the Greater Glory of You Know Who.

Bob,

Your description of life under Free Will bears an uncanny resemblance to American Idol. Narcissist Simon Cowell with his godlike powers makes it hell for select contestants so that others may rise to the final ten. A few lucky performances transmute into a newfound grace, and it's all for the greater glory of...

Kelly Clarkson!

"Hail Kelly, full of hits, the charts are with thee. Blessed art thou among producers and blessed are the music executives getting rich off of thee.

Holy Kelly, Queen of Pop, sing for us now and at the hour of our drive home.

Seacrest out."

I think the truest argument against the death penalty is that imposing it damages the society that employs it. It is really nothing more than the extension of the moral argument against torture, which has the same effect.

The point here is that it's a mistake to think only of what the perpetrator "deserves", based on his crime. Yes, in a very real sense, a murderer may well "deserve" to be put to death himself. But also in a very real sense someone who tortures and maims an innocent deserves to be so tortured and maimed himself. But we understand that to do so by our government would degrade our society.

Why do people blanch at the idea of execution by firing squad, or by evisceration, even in cases in which the murderer himself performed his murder in equally horrible ways? Because it degrades us. We would feel we have stooped to the level of the murderer.

THAT is the argument, precisely, against the death penalty itself.

Patrick:

In a word, yes :)

You can't disprove the elephant if the elephant is so defined (tautologically) as to be invisible.

The best you can do is make inductive claims that support the irrationality of its existence. It's illogical to believe in the elephant (or god), just as it's unwise to believe that the sun won't rise tomorrow.

They're still only inductive claims. They don't definitively prove anything. Read David Hume's evisceration of the Inductive Fallacy -- a classic of early modern philosophy.

They speak about epistemology -- what it is we can know. They are dead-mute on ontology -- what things are in fact.

Bob

Oops, sorry, posted on wrong thread!

Though we could show lots of stories about atheists being made to sing Christian carols, read or answer questions about Christian myths, being made to pledge under god, to a god, or to pray to some diety.

Not to mention that "In God We Trust" is on all of our currency. Maybe that is why Republicans worship money?

Another great band name: The Bastard Sons of Johnny Cash. Not just a great name, a great band. Check them out (www.bsojc.com) Sorry - too busy at work to properly link. Forgive me this once?

also, Screaming Cheetah Wheelies (they actually had a coupla hits on radio)

and barband from my college town that our dishwasher's brother formed: The Yams from Outer Space!

Patrick on December 13, 2005 at 2:22 AM:

For those agnostics in the crowd, are you agnostic about the existence of invisible, immaterial elephants that constantly gnaw on your flesh but reconstruct it so that you don't feel anything?

Elephants don't eat meat. Besides, wouldn't their trunks get in the way? Perhaps they aren't really elephants...

Note that I'm not questioning whether or not something exists beyond my direct experience. I'm only questioning the nature of that 'something'.

I don't know.

Is that an agnostic statement?

Atheism is a dogmatic assertion of a positive ontology?

I think you've got your terms mixed up there, bub, or, to quote Mr. Show, you don't know what words, mean, do you?

So, atheism is dogmatic. Well we'd need some doctrine in the first place, and I'll be honest with you, I've never read a book about atheism in my life, any more than I've read books about breathing. I've read books by atheists, but usually the subject wasn't atheism at all.

Assertion it is not. Attitude or subjective mode, perhaps. Agnosticism, on the other hand is a very positive assertion that human beings are unequiped to either know or not know or even understand theistic questions, which posits a whole structure that, against most philosophical schools of thought and trends, would validate something extrinsic to our bodies, something manichean, some unknowable something that's there, but we can't know anything about it, some out-there reality that might as well be ectoplasm, thus, agnosticism is spread-eagling to weak metaphysics. Metaphysics is messy and prone to wild discourses of domination and hierarchy, I thought we were done with metaphysics?

Assertion. Atheism does not assert; it does not deny. Atheism, which does not exist except to those who cannot understand or conceive of a subjective personhood without inserting their own theoretical lack of theism, is the atheist subject parsing reality in the absence of theistic layer of constructed meaning. You wouldn't define English in the sense that it is not Latin grammar, and go about elucidating its syntax in terms of how it violates Latin declension, conjugation, gender and construction? You could, but you'd be less than clever to do so.

I'm being deliberately obtuse. Atheism is the ground, above it is the whole architecture of superstructural theistic meandering, including agnosticism, sprawls. While that stuff is certainly pretty for you flying buttress-fetish types, it doesn't change the fact that it's all constructed, whereas Atheism is not, that is to say that atheism lacks sustained elaboration for it lacks dogma, tenants, rules, hierarchy, ritual and maintenance. One can certainly lose one's faith, but one cannot lose one's atheism. Atheism is a term for non-atheists to describe what they cannot conceive of, that atheists adopt, as I do now, as in extremis semantic node that is discernable shorthand for what we are positively to those who are what we are not on account of a superfluous cultural construction.

Every child is born an atheist. In the same way that we 'gender' and 'race' children, that we teach them what roles they have to play, who they're supposed to be better than, who they can look down on, we theocize them, too.

Ontological ideas aside, atheism is the only ontology that does not require a metaphysics, appeal to authorities, ancient writ, mystical poems, revelation, speaking in tongues, meditation, ritual sex with temple prostitutes, worship of an iron cross or stones demarking property lines, washing in a filthy river, slitting the throats of girls and rubbing them on trees, resurrection, twisted logic about intelligently-designed watch universes, ley-lines, chi, feng, incense, prayer-flags, tithing, communism, capitalism, agrarianism, spiritualism, protestantism, catholicism, respecting cows, abstaining from pork, embalming your cats and favorite servants, avoiding shell-fish, stoning your neighbor, working out the theocratics of slavery, jihad, crusades, mikvahs, kundalini or magic to discuss it. It exists before refusal or affirmation of these ideas. Atheism is the instinctual 'no thanks' to a bloody history of repression, subjugation and just bizarre, incomprehesible and pre-industrial, pre-scientific belief. It is the mind operating without all the cultural spyware and baggage we're all beset with nearly from birth. But more so than that, it is instinctual. As an ontology, it the phenomenological ontology without apologetics. There is no other human system of thought, being or theism that exists without apologetics. None, all other systematic approachs to reality are just that, systematic and logically strained. The so-called Atheist apologetics that do exist do not address atheism to atheists, but explore how theocratic thought elaborates itself from power-structures completely external to atheist modes of awareness and thus as religious thought proceeds further and further afield it affords itself of an apologetics completely insupportable by logical and positivistic modes of inquiry.

And that, sirs, is how you write a goddamn troll.

Bravo, Brandon. Or in the words of Trapper John McIntire: "What he said!"

Brandon,

Excellent work. Thank you for writing that.

Just to make a point about the significance of the argument from evil I mentioned above.

One of its important virtues is that it doesn't simply claim that the burden of proof lies on the theistic side, and that we should naturally assume atheism until good evidence for God is presented. While that is in fact a very good point, the argument from evil goes an important step further. It tries to demonstrate that the all-good, all-knowing, all-powerful God of the Judaeo-Christian tradition cannot exist because of the existence of evil (or certain kinds of evil).

In effect, it's like a Popperian disconfirmation of the existence of God, which is probably an even more convincing argument than the assertion that there's no positive evidence of God.

brandon
Every child is born an atheist. In the same way that we 'gender' and 'race' children, that we teach them what roles they have to play, who they're supposed to be better than, who they can look down on, we theocize them, too.

I'd agree in the sense that every child is also born without a mother tongue. But I'd differ in that, as children are obviously locked and loaded to learn language, they are also innately predisposed to theism. In short, I think theism is an evolved trait.

Donald E. Brown catalogued a list of Human universals in a book of the same name. He found these present in every culture (but not in everyone in every culture) no matter where, from jungles to ice caps, primitive to modern. Some are...

- belief in supernatural/religion
- magic
- magic to increase life
- magic to sustain life
- magic to win love
- divination
- death rituals
- rituals

frankly0
It tries to demonstrate that the all-good, all-knowing, all-powerful God of the Judaeo-Christian tradition cannot exist because of the existence of evil (or certain kinds of evil).

As an add-on, another human universal is...

- good and bad distinguished

excellent brandon

Lutefisk - texture of jello, smell of vomit, tast of, suprisingly, not much of anything at all.

I've had it, out of a sense of arrogance and "I can eat anything."

I'll be starving before I have it again. Yes, yes, I know it came about as a means of preserving Cod against spoilage.

Thank God for modern refrigeration, I'll eat my Cod as-is.

I believe that "G_D" is;
so (for me) "G_D" is.
You believe that no "G_D" is;
so (for you) "G_D" is not.

Belief is subjective, personal, visceral.
Beyond (above? below?) Words.
Beyond (above? below?) Right & Wrong.
It is in-explicatory.

It is as productive for me to quarrel
with someone about their Beliefs
as about the shape of their nose…

By the way, the generic meaning of agnostic is that one does not care that much. It was the folks who believe in debating God that added the more restrictive, meaning of the word.

"..they [children] are also innately predisposed to theism"

Red State Mike makes a valid point, I believe. You know, a newborn has no concept of distinct humans just like him. To the extent that the new born reacts to the world, his prior assumption is that he is the god of his environment.

Some speculate that much of our religious ritual may be a consolation prize to the human individual when he let's go of the god center point of view. The deep psychological disorders, depression for example, are arrived at from the very young infants being in distress about there helplessness (according to much theory).

A natural example of psychological theism gone bad would be Jimmy Carter, the man who still beleives himself to be the messiah.

shortstop: Madalyn Murray O'Hair. Who's never been found, by the way. But no reason to think a child of God offed her, none at all.

Spelling correct, facts not so much. The dismembered remains of O'Hair, her son and adopted daughter were found buried on a Texas ranch in 2001. O'Hair's remains were identified using her prosthetic hip.

It wasn't God who offed them, but their ex-con employee, David Waters, and his accomplices.

What's never been found is the $500,000 in gold coins that Waters stole from them.

LW Phil: Hope you're not still feeling like odd man out. I like craigie's characterization of standing on the bed throwing pillows and giggling uncontrollably (I added that last part). No ill will or disrespect whatsoever meant, at least from this quarter.

Grumpy! I stand significantly corrected. Thanks for setting me straight; I missed that whole story.

Now how did an atheist manage to accrue a half-million in gold without God's help? Just kidding...not going there.

I've long thought this showed how much right-wingers will lie. Name a single atheist in office anywhere. You can't, so when they complain about how much power we have, what ARE they talking about?

Mike B. I've long thought this showed how much right-wingers will lie. Name a single atheist in office anywhere. You can't, so when they complain about how much power we have, what ARE they talking about?

You need a secret Republican decoder wristband like mine. I'm typing in:

"Atheists have too much power!"

Just a second. (Humming...straightening piles of paper...deleting penis enlargement e-mails...gazing at nails...) Okay, here we go. It says:

"100 percent of the population doesn't believe what we believe. We're fucking oppressed! Waaaaaah!"

These things make ideal Festivus gifts, by the way.

Western religionists, scientists, atheists may disagree on the small things but they agree on the big thing. My way is the only way and everyone who follows another path is a deluded fool.

Most westerners are utterly ignorant of another way of thinking that has grown up on the eastern side of the globe, which I much prefer. All paths are different ways of seeking an Ultimate Reality that is beyond the ability of the thinking mind to comprehend, but is our destiny to one day know in its totality.

India may be poor but its philosophical reach, and therefore its tolerance for all views, is vastly greater than ours. For instance, you could make a case that South India is the most religious place on Earth, but for many years the government of the state of Kerala was Communist.

Interesting aside: Westerners talk about the Kerala miracle---the highest literacy, best medical care, lowest poverty in India---but they rarely mention it was the Communists who were responsible. The Capitalists don't want to admit the Communists ever did anything that worked!

All paths are different ways of seeking an Ultimate Reality that is beyond the ability of the thinking mind to comprehend, but is our destiny to one day know in its totality.

That's just the sort of thinking that gets your lands conquered by a bunch of Brits with bad teeth, ol' chap.

Interesting aside: Westerners talk about the Kerala miracle

Hmmm, I googled it (Google being the closest thing to God we have in our atheist universe) and the first hit I got was 09 Nights / 10 Days Deluxe Kerala Miracle Vacation package

We're not born hardwired to believe religion per se. We're born hardwired to 1-observe our environment and how it effects us, through whatever of our senses are working at the time (this improves), 2-predict what will happen in our environment and how it WILL effect us, and finally 3-try to control what's happening in our environment so that we survive and don't suffer much.

Watch a pigeon in a Skinner box. That's religion.

"Every child is born an atheist. In the same way that we 'gender' and 'race' children, that we teach them what roles they have to play, who they're supposed to be better than, who they can look down on, we theocize them, too."

What?
If ever a pile of words were combined to make a pile of nonsense, this is it.

Red State Mike on December 13, 2005 at 2:37 PM:

That's just the sort of thinking that gets your lands conquered by a bunch of Brits with bad teeth, ol' chap.

And the Brits still rule there to this day!

Ummm...

Google being the closest thing to God we have in our atheist universe

Google might loosely qualify under 'all-knowing', but it's not 'all-powerful'...

...That's Microsoft...

You need a secret Republican decoder wristband like mine

I can usually tell what they're saying, it's just hypocritical sometimes.

Western religionists, scientists, atheists may disagree on the small things but they agree on the big thing. My way is the only way and everyone who follows another path is a deluded fool

And you know this how? Because they "really mean" that? It's entirely possible to think someone else is wrong without thinking they're a "fool". And, that whole argument style, trying to place everything on the same footing just so you can make a smarmy point, doesn't really hold up well.

If we're going with a Norwegian theme for the potluck, we'll be needing a good honey mead to bring good cheer and stave off the fear of being crisped to death by Mecha-Jesus.

If we're going to have a Norwegian theme, we'll be needing some lutefisk. And that should keep any daemons from Hades (or Heaven even) at bay ... they can't abide even a whiff 'o the stuff. But set a place for Loki and Thor....

Cheers,

If we're going to have a Norwegian theme, we'll be needing some lutefisk. And that should keep any daemons from Hades (or Heaven even) at bay

I used some lutefisk to chase out nest of rats from under the front porch. But now I've got a family of Norwegians that I can't get rid of...

I once had an Icelandic roommate who liked to eat slabs of dried cod smeared with butter. This made American suitors head for the exits even though she was 6'0" and gorgeous with racehorse legs. The neighborhood dogs frequently hung out around our apartment door, however.

Well, I have to disagree with you, and I guess you'll just have to kick my ass :)

* And I have come here to do just that.

Agnosticism is the absence of belief. It asserts that the fundamental ontological questions are unknowable.

*Correct but only to a point. Agnostics claim to have no firm belief 'either way' - which makes them atheists (no belief in God), but of a limp and flacid variety.

Atheism is the dogmatic assertion of a positive ontology. It can't be proven or disproven. But some atheists (the one who get the press and write for atheist magazines) argue as if it were a fact.

*Incorrect. Atheism is simply 'no belief in god' (it's latin, look it up). Dogmatism has nothing to do with it.

And that's dogmatism. It partakes of the same intellectual mistake that Christians make when they confuse faith with facts.

*Incorrect. Atheism is defined by the absence of belief - no mistake necessary. We are all born atheists and must be 'educated' to become faithful.

And it can be *very* annoying. Nobody likes smug know-it-alls who in truth can't back up their claims with logic or facts.

*Now you are just name-calling. But hey, being a know-it-all ain't so bad. Better than the alternative.

Agnosticism, contrarily is entirely defensible and doesn't seek to shove anything down anybody's throats. It's just a personal statement.

*However it is a mistake to think agnosticism is separate from atheism.

Unless you're a militant agnostic. There the battle cry is I DON'T KNOW AND *YOU* DON'T EITHER :)

*Given you can't actually 'know' anything supernatural (spirits, auras, god, goddesses, etc.) my view is that atheist are justified in saying they 'know' that they are correct, and that you agnostics are our weak intellectual sisters incapable of standing up for your lack of beliefs.

Antiphon

Here are some definitions all courtesy of dictionary.com

atheism
1. a.Disbelief in or denial of the existence of God or gods.
1. b.The doctrine that there is no God or gods.
2.Godlessness; immorality

disbelief-Refusal or reluctance to believe.

agnostic-
1. a.One who believes that it is impossible to know whether there is a God.
1. b.One who is skeptical about the existence of God but does not profess true atheism.
2. One who is doubtful or noncommittal about something.

A couple more definitions from dictionary.com.

Dogmatic
1. Relating to, characteristic of, or resulting from dogma.
2. Characterized by an authoritative, arrogant assertion of unproved or unprovable principles. See Synonyms at dictatorial

Dogma
1. A doctrine or a corpus of doctrines relating to matters such as morality and faith, set forth in an authoritative manner by a church.
2. An authoritative principle, belief, or statement of ideas or opinion, especially one considered to be absolutely true. See Synonyms at doctrine.
3. A principle or belief or a group of them:

Most westerners are utterly ignorant of another way of thinking that has grown up on the eastern side of the globe, which I much prefer. All paths are different ways of seeking an Ultimate Reality that is beyond the ability of the thinking mind to comprehend, but is our destiny to one day know in its totality.

I don't think it is necessarily beyond the ability of the thinking mind to comprehend -- it is a point on which you might say I am agnostic -- but, despite being very much a "western religionist" (of the Catholic variety), I do think it is beyond the ability of language to communicate with fidelity. Or, IOW, "the Way that can be told is not the true Way".

Red State Mike,

Although Brown asserts in his book that there are certain universals among human cultures, he had to twist the ethnographic data to support such a conclusion.

Every other anthropologist I've ever met has said that there are no universals, but maybe they're all just dogmatically asserting relativism. I don't think so though, otherwise sociobiology might be a working theory in sociocultural anthropology today.

My own research in mortuary practice led me to a couple of hunter-gatherer cultures in Africa that don't believe in an afterlife and have no death rituals (though I can't remember the names of those groups right now, hmm I'll find them though)

antiphon:

> "Well, I have to disagree with you, and I
> guess you'll just have to kick my ass :)"

> And I have come here to do just that.

Well you didn't do a very good job, as I'm still standing :)
I'll deal with you before I take on the insufferable brandon --
who exemplifies all the qualities I detest in strong atheists.

> "agnosticism is the absence of belief. It asserts that
> the fundamental ontological questions are unknowable."

> *Correct but only to a point. Agnostics claim to have
> no firm belief 'either way' - which makes them atheists
> (no belief in God), but of a limp and flacid variety.

That's weak agnosticism, which as I stated in an earlier message
isn't all that different from weak atheism. It's noncomittal and
personal. But I think it has the virtue over atheism of humility.
I'd much rather say "I don't know" than "it doesn't exist" if I
can offer nothing but inductive arguments that it doesn't exist.

> "Atheism is the dogmatic assertion of a positive ontology. It can't
> be proven or disproven. But some atheists (the one who get the
> press and write for atheist magazines) argue as if it were a fact."

> Incorrect. Atheism is simply 'no belief in god' (it's
> latin, look it up). Dogmatism has nothing to do with it.

Sure it does. Your post, for instance, rests on unstated
dogmatic assumptions about the First Cause. They may
well be accurate assumptions. Or they may well not.

You can't prove it either way. You can't create a
falsifiable hypothesis that god doesn't exist and test
it in the real world. So like the flipside argument that
underpins, say, Intelligent Design, the assertion is essentially
meaningless, at least by scientific standards of truth.

This is called ignosticism, btw. It's
why so many scientists are agnostic.

> "And that's dogmatism. It partakes of the same intellectual
> mistake that Christians make when they confuse faith with facts."

> *Incorrect. Atheism is defined by the absence of
> belief - no mistake necessary. We are all born
> atheists and must be 'educated' to become faithful.

Well, once again, there are two basic flavors of atheism disparate
enough to enttail a qualitative difference. Weak (or negative)
atheism is the absense of belief -- which may or may not be bolstered
by the various arguments that stronger atheists use to discredit
belief. Strong (or positive) atheism is the assertion that
these arguments are good enough in themselves to seal the deal.

As Kant famously demonstrated, they are not. You're still
left with the First Cause. But strong atheists carry on as
if they had won the argument. They destroyed an edifice
without replacing it with anything. We, after all, exist.

And you have zero ability to address the question of why that is so.

> "And it can be *very* annoying. Nobody likes smug know-it-alls
> who in truth can't back up their claims with logic or facts."

> Now you are just name-calling. But hey, being a know-
> it-all ain't so bad. Better than the alternative.

Well, it was meant to be provocative. Certainly I wouldn't
characterize Arne as being one of those sorts. But that was
nothing, you'll admit, like brandon calling me a troll :)

> "Agnosticism, contrarily is entirely defensible
> and doesn't seek to shove anything down anybody's
> throats. It's just a personal statement."

> However it is a mistake to think
> agnosticism is separate from atheism.

Oh, they're very much related. They both imply (weak and strong)
a lack of positive belief. It's the difference between making
statements about what is vs making statements about what we can know.

> Given you can't actually 'know' anything supernatural (spirits,
> auras, god, goddesses, etc.)

It's also, of course, entirely possible to be a believer without
requiring any supernatural trappings at all. The entire history
of liberal Protestantism from at least the time of the Higher
Critics is the history of the de-supernaturalization of the bible.

> my view is that atheist are justified in saying they 'know'
> that they are correct,

And this, of course, is nothing more than a dogmatic assertion :)

> and that you agnostics are our weak intellectual sisters
> incapable of standing up for your lack of beliefs.

Not really. Strong agnostics have a very powerful critique of
positivist epistemology, which cites quantum mechanics and some
of the debates in cognitive science to problematize the scope
of human knowledge. We stand up for the principle that what
the mind can construct is only a model of what truly exists.

We're the anti-metaphysicians in this debate.
We make no unprovable ontological assertions.

Bob

Global Citizen:

In other words, agnosticism is a cop-out.

Quick, GC, what's in my left hand as I type this? You say you don't know? That you can't possibly know?

What a cop-out.

shortstop: I once had an Icelandic roommate who liked to eat slabs of dried cod smeared with butter. This made American suitors head for the exits even though she was 6'0" and gorgeous with racehorse legs. The neighborhood dogs frequently hung out around our apartment door, however.

You don't still have her number, do you? As a northern European I'm fairly immune to dried cod, and I'll do anything, anything at all for racehorse legs....

rmck1: As Kant famously demonstrated, they are not. You're still left with the First Cause.

Buddha taught that there is no "first cause" -- reality is more like a web of causality in which all phenomena ("dharmas") arise from -- or are "caused" or "conditioned" by -- all that is.

Buddha might indeed be considered by some to be an "atheist", since he taught that everything is impermanent and that nothing has an independent or enduring self-nature. That would seem to preclude "God" as I understand the concept of "God" in Middle Eastern monotheistic religions.

shortstop: I once had an Icelandic roommate who liked to eat slabs of dried cod smeared with butter.

Stefan: As a northern European I'm fairly immune to dried cod

As a vegan, I don't find dried cod smeared with butter to be particularly more unappetizing than any of numerous things that I see Americans eating all the time. Greasy fast food chicken with extra salmonella on the side? Hot dogs stuffed with the scrapings from the slaughterhouse floor? Please.

It's surprising some of the things that people eat, that they get very upset with you if you start talking about what those things actually are and where they come from while they're eating them. "Stop talking to me about what I'm eating, you're making me sick!"

Stefan: You don't still have her number, do you?

In fact, I do, but she's now married with three kids and runs a Reykjavik flower shop. If you think you can convince her to chuck it all and start over with you (she loves New York), may I suggest postponing your visit until the spring? I've been to Iceland in December--the four daily hours of weak daylight will creep you out. Go in June, when it's light all the time.

Strong agnostics have a very powerful critique of positivist epistemology, which cites quantum mechanics and some of the debates in cognitive science to problematize the scope of human knowledge. We stand up for the principle that what the mind can construct is only a model of what truly exists.

We're the anti-metaphysicians in this debate.
We make no unprovable ontological assertions.

I tend to intuitively agree with the strongest agnostics as to what is, in fact, actually knowable. I just don't equate "I believe X is true" with "I believe X is true and knowable."

One need not believe a proposition to be knowable to believe the proposition itself. If one defines agnosticism purely in terms of epistemology, then it is orthogonal rather than alternative to atheism or many possible forms of theism.

> Atheism is a dogmatic assertion of a positive ontology?

Strong (or positive) atheism, yes. You're going to attempt
to conflate strong atheism with weak atheism. Just watch :)

> I think you've got your terms mixed up there, bub, or, to
> quote Mr. Show, you don't know what words, mean, do you?

And you're a pompous asshole who exemplifies everything I despise
about smug, self-certain, vain, in-love-with-your-own-empty-rhetoric
strong atheists. All you can do is ad-hom and reductio, my man.

So forgive me if I chuck a little back from whence it came, eh?

> So, atheism is dogmatic. Well we'd need some doctrine in the first
> place, and I'll be honest with you, I've never read a book about
> atheism in my life, any more than I've read books about breathing.

There are journals of atheism. I read a few in the library a couple
years ago. They are dogmatic, shrill, obnoxious and prove nothing.

> I've read books by atheists, but usually
> the subject wasn't atheism at all.

Then how would you know that they're atheists?

> Assertion it is not. Attitude or subjective mode, perhaps.

Do you demonstrate anything in your post here? Aside that
you're a ham-handed blowhard, I mean. I mean, do you
demonstrate the validity of an argument? Hmmm ... let's see ...

> Agnosticism, on the other hand is a very positive
> assertion that human beings are unequiped to either
> know or not know or even understand theistic questions,

Or Deistic questions, for that matter.

> which posits a whole structure that, against most philosophical
> schools of thought and trends, would validate something
> extrinsic to our bodies, something manichean, some unknowable
> something that's there, but we can't know anything about it,

Ahh, the ol' atheist straw man. Agnostics are so weak-minded
they won't allow themselves to deny the mumbo-pocus of religious
metaphysics. Since agnostics are squarely on the side of the
scientific method, they'd most happily acknowledge any empirical
proofs that demonstrate the non-existence of ghosts, auras,
out-of-body experiences, the afterlife, ecotplasm, etc.

What we do recognize is the *subjective realities* of some of
these experiences for the people who sincerely believe in them.

> some out-there reality that might as well be ectoplasm,
> thus, agnosticism is spread-eagling to weak metaphysics.

We're just not arrogant fucks enough to denigrate people
who have these experiences. We'd like to understand the
truth, but we realize that what's real is what's real in
its consequences. I have no access to anybody else's
subjective mental state and neither, my friend, do you.

> Metaphysics is messy and prone to wild
> discourses of domination and hierarchy,

Postmodern metaphysics, maybe. A silly, short-lived French fad.

> I thought we were done with metaphysics?

Read Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. After the headaches have
worn off and you've upped the prescription for your reading
glasses, consider the fact that Kant caused more suicides
among clerics in his day because he demonstrated more clearly
than any before that the existence of god was unknowable.

And Kant founded a metaphysics properly-understood (the
underlying structure of reality grounded in perceptual
necessity) that serves theoretical science well to this day.

> Assertion. Atheism does not assert; it does not deny.

Atheism denies the existence of god, sheesh. Is
this intellectual dishonesty ... or just stupidity?

> Atheism, which does not exist except to those who cannot
> understand or conceive of a subjective personhood without
> inserting their own theoretical lack of theism,

WTF kind of jibberish is this?

> is the atheist subject parsing reality in the
> absence of theistic layer of constructed meaning.

What an empty load of obscurantist verbiage. Let
me guess ... you've read a lot of Foucault recently :)

> You wouldn't define English in the sense that it is not
> Latin grammar, and go about elucidating its syntax in terms
> of how it violates Latin declension, conjugation, gender and
> construction? You could, but you'd be less than clever to do so.

And WTF is the point of *this* idiotic straw man?

> I'm being deliberately obtuse.

Gee .. I wonder why you'd feel the need
to resort to *that* rhetorical strategy? :)

> Atheism is the ground, above it is the whole
> architecture of superstructural theistic
> meandering, including agnosticism, sprawls.

Bullshit. Read Kant, you pretentious jackwad.

> While that stuff is certainly pretty for you flying buttress-
> fetish types, it doesn't change the fact that it's all
> constructed, whereas Atheism is not, that is to say that
> atheism lacks sustained elaboration for it lacks dogma,
> tenants, rules, hierarchy, ritual and maintenance. One can
> certainly lose one's faith, but one cannot lose one's atheism.

Well, that's certainly not true. Kids who grow up in atheist
families often react by finding faith for themselves. Or maybe
you're this know-it-all teenager who read some *really neat
arguments* on an atheist website, and then one day in college
realized that they never even addressed the fundamental question,
let alone disproved it. Atheist doctrine (and I do mean doctrine)
is a great wrecking ball. Occam's Razor is a wonderful discerning
tool. But it leaves nothing in its place. Inductive arguments are
intuitively compelling but not definitive. The mystery remains.

> Atheism is a term for non-atheists to describe what they cannot
> conceive of, that atheists adopt, as I do now, as in extremis
> semantic node that is discernable shorthand for what we are
> positively to those who are what we are not on account of
> a superfluous cultural construction.

It's flat-out blathering pseudo-intellectual jargon
because you apparently can't just write a straightforward,
logically consistent paragraph defending atheism.

Immanuel Kant would kick your ass so far down the block ...

> Every child is born an atheist. In the same way that
> we 'gender' and 'race' children, that we teach them what
> roles they have to play, who they're supposed to be better
> than, who they can look down on, we theocize them, too.

You really *are* some wretched refugee from a post-
structuralist cultural studies program, aren't you? ROTFL !

> Ontological ideas aside, atheism is the only ontology that does not
> require a metaphysics, appeal to authorities, ancient writ, mystical
> poems, revelation, speaking in tongues, meditation, ritual sex with
> temple prostitutes, worship of an iron cross or stones demarking
> property lines, washing in a filthy river, slitting the throats of
> girls and rubbing them on trees, resurrection, twisted logic about
> intelligently-designed watch universes, ley-lines, chi, feng,
> incense, prayer-flags, tithing, communism, capitalism, agrarianism,
> spiritualism, protestantism, catholicism, respecting cows, abstaining
> from pork, embalming your cats and favorite servants, avoiding
> shell-fish, stoning your neighbor, working out the theocratics of
> slavery, jihad, crusades, mikvahs, kundalini or magic to discuss it.