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October 21, 2007
Posted at 9:00 am by Richard and tagged abba, atheism, belief, chocolate, coming-out, god, labels, nothing, richard-dawkins, sam-harris, spice-girls. Popularity: 100% [?]
I’ve been holding off talking about Richard Dawkins’ “Out Campaign” for a while (yes, it’s probably all died down by now - you’ve either got a scarlet “A” on your t-shirt, website, car and baby, or you don’t) because I still haven’t figured out what I really think about it. On one hand, I applaud the effort to bring atheists together and to “out” themselves, but on the other, I still see the label “Atheist” as useful as “non-chocolate lover” or non-spice girls fan.
Of course, the use of the word “atheist” (and therefore the need to “out” oneself) has been stirred up recently by Sam Harris at an Atheist Alliance conference in Washington - there are no “non-racists”, so “why are we defining ourselves by something that should simply be the case”?
Every political or social group have certain beliefs and/or interests in common. A football team shares a love of sports, and possibly a belief that football is a worthwhile pursuit. A political group might share certain values and beliefs about how a society should function. A religion, well, they often share beliefs about a great many things: politics, sexuality, family values, etc. But more importantly - they share a belief in a supernatural being (or spirit, or afterlife, etc.).
What do atheists share? Nothing. Many of us can’t even agree on a definition of Atheism! I don’t mean to say that there’s nothing that we share, but what we do share is, quite literally, “nothing” - we share a nonexistent thing: a lack of a belief in God. While this probably gives us a more common understanding of God than most religious people (even within the same religion or denomination, it seems every person has their own understanding of exactly what or who God is), this doesn’t seem to be a great foundation for an alliance.
Am I going to “come out”, well - yes, and no. I am without religion. I am, therefore, an atheist. I am also without racism, and am therefore non-racist. I have never killed anyone, and am therefore a non-murderer. I further have no love for chocolate, no love of ABBA or the Spice Girls and most certainly no belief in fairies or celestial teapots. If you wish to define me by any of these “labels”, feel free - but I certainly don’t.
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September 9, 2007
Posted at 8:33 pm by Richard and tagged computer, god, humour, jesus, religion, satan, technology. Popularity: 45% [?]
I’ve been away this weekend, and haven’t got around to writing a proper post, so I’ll leave you with a joke instead.
Jesus and Satan were having an on-going argument about who was better on the computer. They had been going at it for days, and frankly God was tired of hearing all the bickering.
Finally fed up, God said, “THAT’S IT! I have had enough. I am going to set up a test that will run for two hours, and from those results, I will judge who does the better job.”
So Satan and Jesus sat down at the keyboards and typed away.
They moused.
They faxed.
They e-mailed.
They e-mailed with attachments.
They downloaded.
They did spreadsheets!
They wrote reports.
They created labels and cards.
They created charts and graphs.
They did some genealogy reports.
They did every job known to man.
Jesus worked with heavenly efficiency and Satan was faster than hell
Then, ten minutes before their time was up, lightning suddenly flashed across the sky, thunder rolled, rain poured, and, of course, the power went off.
Satan stared at his blank screen and screamed every curse word known in the underworld.
Jesus just sighed.
Finally the electricity came back on, and each of them restarted their computers. Satan started searching frantically, screaming:
“It’s gone! It’s all GONE! “I lost everything when the power went out!”
Meanwhile, Jesus quietly started printing out all of his files from the past two hours of work.
Satan observed this and became irate.
“Wait!” he screamed. “That’s not fair! He cheated! How come he has all his work and I don’t have any?”
God just shrugged and said,
JESUS SAVES
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August 18, 2007
Posted at 12:44 am by Richard and tagged creationism, email, evolution, god, scam, spam, stupidity, trust. Popularity: 24% [?]
58% of USAians don’t realise that people might try and scam them online, and probably trust everything they get via email. In other news, 55% of USAians believe that God created humans in their present form.
Anybody see the correlation?
(Via The Consumerist)
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August 8, 2007
Posted at 10:15 pm by Richard and tagged fsm, god, googlism, humour, pastafarianism, proof, search. Popularity: 28% [?]
I always knew the Christians had it wrong, but I just couldn’t put my finger on it. 9 Proofs of the REAL God:
- Google is the closest thing to an Omniscient (all-knowing) entity in existence, which can be scientifically verified.
- Google is everywhere at once (Omnipresent).
- Google answers prayers.
- Google is potentially immortal.
- Google is infinite.
- Google remembers all.
- Google can “do no evil” (Omnibenevolent).
- According to Google trends, the term “Google” is searched for more than the terms “God”, “Jesus”, “Allah”, “Buddha”, “Christianity”, “Islam”, “Buddhism” and “Judaism” combined.
- Evidence of Google’s existence is abundant.
Although, now I’m confused - is Google God, is is it the Flying Spaghetti Monster? Oh noodley/googley one, please give me a sign, so that I may know who to worship!
(via Williamely)
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August 5, 2007
Posted at 1:19 pm by Richard and tagged belief, eclecticism, einstein, god, hippy, jesus, red-dwarf, religion, truth, wwjd. Popularity: 39% [?]
Last week, I mentioned that science could be a way to “religious experience”, and I discussed in one of my earliest posts (Religious Eclecticism) the idea that all religions could be based on some element of truth. Don’t misunderstand me, I believe whatever truth they may be based on has been utterly distorted, but that doesn’t mean there’s no truth to be found.
I think that all the “prophets” and religious leaders believed in the message they preached, but they didn’t expect (or want) their messages to be accepted as divine and unquestionable truth - they wanted people to think for themselves. I believe that Jesus, if he was a real man and if his message hadn’t been distorted by religion, would still be revered today without needing needing to claim that he was “God”.
Christians often ask themselves, “What Would Jesus Do?”, and I think if Jesus lived today, he’d be amazed by the magic all around us, and might even “find God” in a similar way to Einstein:
Sometimes he was really using God as just a sort of convenient metaphor. But he did have, I think, a genuine cosmic religious feeling, a sense of admiration at the intellectual ingenuity of the universe. Not just its majesty, but its extraordinary subtlety and beauty and mathematical elegance.
I think Jesus, today, would be more like a modern Buddhist or perhaps a “hippy” (jokes are often made about Jesus being the first hippy, but I think all jokes aside there’s a lot of truth to that).
If we ask ourselves the question, “What Would Jesus Believe?”, whatever the answer is, I definitely don’t believe he’d be a Christian, a Jew or a Muslim, for that matter. It makes me think of the Cat’s religion in Red Dwarf…
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August 1, 2007
Posted at 10:32 am by del.icio.us and tagged atheism, bible, buddhism, cat, catholicism, christian, christianity, comparison, computer, creationism, death, ethics, evolution, god, humour, Links, lolcats, morality, programming, proof, religion, simulation, soul, starwars, summary, translation. Popularity: 57% [?]
Here are some of the sites I’ve been looking at recently, that I wanted to share:
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