Steve Breen for February 08, 2013

True, if your concept of God is limited to that…

There is a God, dwelling in billions of imaginations, inspiring a massive economy of religion and inspiring all kinds of rules and credos to be obeyed.

Glad I’m not a part of it.

Spare me .

Faith Control Police are ungodly.

let me know if you…if ANYone sees that big transparent finger writing on a billboard. until then, seems likely the phrase will stay up, and stay true…

I was forced to go to church when I was about 11. I came home and told dirty jokes that I learned that I didn’t understand.That ended church, but I still had to recite the lords prayer in school, and I still resent that.

“At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways – with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, Wait a second.That means there’s a situation vacant.” — Shada, Douglas Adams/Gareth Roberts

Thanks for illustrating what your heart knows!

There are some loud-mouthed obnoxious atheists, and there are also a lot of atheists who don’t really talk about it a lot. Sort of like religious people that way — some are obnoxious about their religion, some aren’t. Personally, I have no desire to argue anyone into non-belief, but if the topic comes up, I’ll say what I think.

Don’t want it shoved down your throat? Dont listen to it.

Or should I say, Don’t swallow

For the Believer, No proof is necessary. For the non-beliver, no proof is sufficient. Strong faith? Proof not needed.Weak faith? What Proof?

Is there a reason this comes up now?

If there is a divine being, they certainly don’t give a crap about us here. Move on to more tangible solutions and forms of governance.

King of me has it right. Religion is all about control, control over people and in particular control over their money through ridiculous strictures on sexual practice and belief. Creates guilt which enables the church to control the individual.

That’s great, the Non-Inquisition. And the Index of Non-forbidden Books.

When a “philosophy” writes lots of repressive laws, and subjugates men, and women, it becomes “organized religion”.

All I ask is that You respect my right to be wrong in your eyes the same way I respect your right to be wrong in my eyes.My job is to present the message. Your job is to decide what to do with it. Accept it or reject it. I have done that which I’ve been commanded.

God loves atheists – they do things themselves and don’t pester Him with their selfish, petty demands.

All the hostilities between sects because they don’t think the others worship the right way is all the proof I need that there is no God.

We atheists have no saints.

There was this king. He dissed God. He saw a finger in mid-air write words on the wall. The next day went badly for him.

“True religion is to help others”. Someone, that a lot of people respect, said that. Try it. See how you like doing that. When you are ready, there is another tip waiting for you.

It is written: “Ask God. He does answer”. James 1:5Those that recognize that they got an answer get very excited. Sometimes, they overdo the religion thing. Sometimes they get confused by all of men’s interpretations.

Some people are aware of the concept of ‘Free Will’. There are some writings that explain Why God does not force people to do good/bad things. Sometimes, it may appear that God fails to do what he ‘should’ (in the eyes of a person). Children say the same thing about their parents, from time to time.

I do not try to prove what God created and what He did not. What is important is connecting with God. I know people that will help you achieve this.

Strange cartoon today….. nice Michelangelo reference

See today’s Dilbert

Is this the same god that wants people to pretend to cannibilize him every week?

The Hymn says, “God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform.” In such mysterious ways that the effects are exactly the same as if he were doing nothing at all.

“Misleading billboard advertising that needs to be stopped, even if by divine intervention.”

“Misleading” in what way? Are you suggesting that the billboard is, in fact, targeted to the only atheist in existence on the planet?

Flip the message, and imagine a billboard reading “Do you believe in God? You are not alone.” That would be no more or less true than the one above. Imagine someone altering THAT billboard to read “You are mistaken.” How would you feel towards the person who did the defacement?

Harley, I’m fine with that. I have no desire to question your faith, if faith helps you deal with the difficulties of life. But notice that you quoted me incorrectly. I didn’t say “same if YOU were doing nothing at all”, I said “the same as if HE were doing nothing at all”. I mostly meant in scientific terms, but you could translate it into moral terms this way: “God helps those who help themselves.” I find that “god” provides for me best when I work hard for myself.

“They continually are suing to have crosses removed.”

Only from government and publicly funded spaces, on the basis that displaying one religion’s symbols is an implicit – or possibly explicit – endorsement of that religion, over other religions and over having no religion at all. The position of not having government declare an official religion is actually a very valuable one – one that the founders, who were painfully aware of the religious wars of Europe and the instability those introduced to government, intended, by all available evidence.

The display of religious symbols, verses, etc. by private individuals on private property, however, is never something that atheists have gone after. These are free and protected, and are everyone’s absolute right. Atheists are not generally in the habit of vandalizing Christian posters and advertisements, either. Now, contrast this to how Christians have reacted to advertisements for atheist or humanist groups…..

You get atheists knocking on your door trying to convert you…???

Remarkable. I have never seen that happen.

Also, when you are ridiculed for not knowing the difference between “faith” and “based on physical evidence”, that may be what you consider obnoxious, but I find it strange that you think anyone should be protected from that criticism.

First, no; freedom OF religion also means freedom FROM DOMINATION BY any given religion, or by religion in general.

Second, “on the grave of a Christian soldier” is not now and has never been a problem. “As a memorial for all soldiers, Christian or not, set up and maintained by federal money” is an endorsement of the symbology of one religion above all, by the government.

“I am in the process of looking for a new job. It is time to move on. Without my Faith I could not make that leap. I would be stuck waiting for random chance to bring something new to me.”

Speaking for myself, I haven’t needed either faith or “random chance” when I started looking for a new job because it was time to move on. I needed job skills, so I went out and got them. There is nothing “random chance” about that part, even in the absence of faith.

Just sayin’.

And I love how you use “faith” as a term of opprobrium!

Which does not seem to have actually affected the existence of Mr. Kent in any way.

So far as we can tell, the result of a coin toss is determined exclusively by the laws of physics. If god is making choices about coin tosses, his choice is identical to physical law.

go to hell, breen, since you believe it’s there

I guess Harley means “I didn’t build that, God did.” Hey, instead of a value added tax, what about a value added god?

Actually, you did, but I’ve seen that you like to accuse people of projecting. In any case, it is rather a frequent ploy for religionists to say that science, evolution, atheism, the big bang or whatever is faith, as if to say “see, you’re position is just as evidence-free as we acknowledge ours to be, on those rare occasions when we are being honest.” There is never a discussion of the quantity and quality of the evidence in which as someone has pointed out, over the last 400 years the scoreboard reads Science hundreds of billions, Religion zero.

Exactly right. Religion is (among other things) the art of introducing unnecessary assumptions. Or, as Douglas Adams so charmingly stated it, “Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?”

Two points, Harley, and I’m being placid here; I know we disagree on many things.First, the probabilistic argument is misused. In fact, if we had time and energy enough to flip a coin an unlimited number of sets of 50 times, it would come up 50 heads on the average once in every 2^50 (which is once in every 1,125,899,906,842,624) times. The plain fact is that it would do so, whether or not your god, any other god, or no god exists. While we don’t have that kind of time, it is easy to verify for, say, 10 coins. A flip of 10 coins will come up all heads once in every 1,024 tosses, on the average. It’s easy to program a computer to simulate the flip of 10 coins, and to run the program 20,000 times. Check the results; there will almost certainly be just about 20 times when all 10 coins landed heads.Second, there is the error known as the lottery error. To state that if a particular outcome happens, then “maybe God had it happen for a reason” is not tenable, for the simple reason that any result from a trial with a large number of equiprobable outcomes is subject to the same argument. That is, to say (let’s use a 6/49 lottery as an example) that the numbers 1-13-19-25-37-40 were drawn. To say that God had it happen for a reason, can’t be sustained, as that could be said about any set of six numbers that came up, say 2-13-19-25-37-40, or 1-2-3-4-5-6. The point is, that one of the 13,983,816 equally probable combinations of numbers had to show up; there is no reason to invoke (any particular) god after the fact. To those who say “well, (my) god makes every result of every lottery drawing happen” I can only respond with Occam’s razor.You should know that I and most, if not all, of the non-believers who post here are not opposed to you practicing the religion of your choice. While thinking that it is false in its explanation of the world around us, I recognize that it might be subjectively helpful to you for various reasons, and I am not the type to try to deny the same constitutional freedoms to others that I expect to enjoy myself. And, if the religionists of the world would “act justly and love mercy and walk humbly with your God” all would be well. What I object to (and I will let other atheists and/or non-believers speak for themselves) is the unwarranted intrusion of religion into science and politics. Science, because religion has fought tooth and nail against all scientific progress for the last 400 years, still holds to demonstrably false assertions (Adam and Eve, and the story of Noah’s flood being only the most egregious of them), and is still trying to ruin science education in this country by substituting creationism for science. Politics, because a not inconsiderable number of people are trying to turn this country into a theocracy.Wishing you the best, and I hope all the hard work pays off. I know what it’s like; in the last 10 years I’ve worked a job and a half, obtained a masters degree, been educating myself to the tune of 100 books a year, and I have seen the fruits of the labor. And I attribute it, not to the god who never had the courtesy to show up while I was religious and wasted 23 years serving him, but to my hard work and good luck since I stopped believing in him.

“I contend we are both atheists, I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”

-Stephen F Roberts

Yeah, you got me there. I guess I’ll just take my empty life, its 36 years and counting happy marriage, my two wonderful children, my education, my friends and my efforts for a better society and better world and go be, well, empty I guess. I suppose I could take up drinking or do drugs or something. All because I don’t believe in an invisible man in the sky for whom there is no evidence. Sad, real sad. I guess I’m just a sorry excuse for a human being. I apologize for using up so many electrons to inflict my misery on you, and wish you the best in your career as the knower of what is in the hearts of all me (as you so incisively showed with me and the doc).“No, we dont have faith in reason and science in the same way as “Cru” (= Campus Crusade) members have faith in God. I see “faith” according to Walter Kaufmann’s definition: strong belief in propositions for which there is insufficient evidence to command the assent of every reasonable person. We have confidence in science because it has led us to provisional truths—it works. Cru doesn’t even know if there’s any God, or, if there is a divine presence, that it’s the Abrahamic god rather than the Hindu god, Yahweh, or Wotan. And we use reason in the same way: it leads us to truth. Revelation, dogma, and authority do not, for if they did there would be only one religion rather than thousands with their disparate and often conflicting doctrines.” Dr. Jerry Coyne at http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2013/02/10/religion-dispatches-on-atheism/

I never considered myself mistaken. Just free of delusional wishfull thinking.

“In your belief system, how to you think man was created?”

Depending on your definition of “created,” my answers are:A) Random chance and natural forces; we weren’t “created,” we “happened.”B) An unbroken series of successful reproductive acts (including the one involving my mother and father, sometime in the spring of 1964).

“So tell me how we ‘happened’”

I already did. Through random chance and natural forces, carried out over an unbroken string of successful reproductive acts. Most likely you’re as aware of the principle of “Natural Selection” as any adult in this nation, even though you don’t accept it. But mutation during reproduction occurs; this has been demonstrated, and is understood. Given that replication is imperfect, it would take divine intervention for Natural Selection NOT to be operant.

I’m always intrigued when people mention the Big Bang theory and biological evolution in the same sentence, as if they were the same thing or happened at the same time. Maybe in Genesis they happened at the same time, but not in the real world. I’ve read enough (at an amateur level) to be persuaded that evolution through natural selection is a very good theory, but I have to admit that my knowledge of physics doesn’t allow me to make an independent judgment about the Big Bang Theory. How many posters here would be willing to say that they understand the details of the theory well enough to evaluate it?

Hey, no problem. We all misuse words now and then—it’s the thoughts we’re trying to get at.Fritzoid and DrCanuck answered your question for me, in many fewer words than I would have used. Cosmological and biological history are now understood well enough that we can be confident of the “big picture”—formation of the sun and the solar system from a cloud of dust and gas (itself a product of previous supernovae; as Neil deGrasse Tyson points out, we are all made of star stuff; see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9D05ej8u-gU), and biological evolution from the first simple replicator to us (I am not implying a ladder; I’m answering your question). No direction, no teleology, no external purpose (or, at least, no good evidence for any of these)—which frees us to make our own purpose in life.

Clearly not; DrCanuck was obviously using “the gods became superfluous” as shorthand for “belief that the gods were necessary for an explanation of life, the universe, and everything, became superfluous.”No, I do not believe in the Big Bang and evolution—I understand why they are both true.

“You can understand the Big Bang and evolution all you want. I do also.But it doesn’t exclude the existence of a God.”

Neither does it require the existence of a God. William of Ockham formulated the principle (which is not a Law) that the explanation for a phenomenon which requires the least amount of deistic intervention is the one most likely to be correct. Put more plainly, “The simpler explanation is the more likely”, and it’s commonly called “Occam’s Razor.” Brother William was a monk and a “scientist” (in quotes because there really was no such thing at the time), and one wonders whether he, a man of God, ever considered that the removal of unnecessary deities just might lead to “nil.”

As I understand it, science is not a set of beliefs, but rather an approach to understanding, and particularly an approach which requires some relationship (though it can be complex) between what we take to be true and evidence. If there is new evidence — or sometimes a reinterpretation of old evidence — then what we take to be true can change. A good example is the flurry of interest in observations of the eclipse that occurred shortly after Einstein published his Theory of Relativity — the theory had to be consistent with the evidence of observation. So the Newtonian model, which had been taken to be true, was modified, but only because observation required the modification. Einstein could have been wrong. That’s typical of a finding in science — it could be wrong, and it has to be tested. As soon as evidence shows that it’s wrong, it’s changed.

Concerning eyes, you might want to look at Richard Dawkins’ book The Blind Watchmaker. He has a pretty extensive discussion of the eye there. It’s really not a problem.

I know that the good doctor can be, shall I say, somewhat direct in the expression of his points, but I have to say that your question about the evolution of male and female anatomy reveals a fundamental misunderstanding at an elementary level.

A footnote — there’s a better discussion of the eye in Dawkins’ “Climbing Mount Improbable”, pp. 138-197.

I think what is rather apparent is that ansonia is troubled by how we came about. You know, when we popped into existence. She also seems to misunderstand the big bang theory. She thinks it describes the origin of the universe but that isn’t right. It attempts to explain how the universe developed from a tiny, very dense state into what it is today. It doesn’t even try explain what initiated the creation of the universe, or what came before the big bang.

Despite constantly demanding sources for every statement one utters, I suspect she also misunderstands “evidence” & “faith”.She thinks that what she does not understand, but still holds to be “true”, requires “belief”.To say that we have to take science on faith is a complete misunderstanding of how science works and it can only came from someone who is wholly ignorant of the scientific method.

Sorry to be so brief, but I’ve been fighting a cold all day, and have to go back to work tomorrow.In one sentence, abiogenesis is independent of biological evolution once you have that replicator. The fact that science does not yet have a molecule by molecule history does not mean that (any) god did it; that is a god of the gaps" argument, which has gone by the boards in the case of the causes of lightning, disease, ad infinitum. OK, more than one sentence! ;-)There is a new book out, “What Is Life? : How Chemistry becomes Biology” by Addy Pross, which is state of the art on abiogenesis. However, one will need a lot of chemistry and at least a little biology to understand it. Take and read.

Very quickly, only two points.First, the Darwin quote is a well-known quote mine; the quote continues: “Yet reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if any variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, can hardly be considered real. How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself first originated; but I may remark that several facts make me suspect that any sensitive nerve may be rendered sensitive to light, and likewise to those coarser vibrations of the air which produce sound.” This was Darwin’s modus operandi—to make an outrageous statement, and then to use it to state what he meant. Do not be fooled by creationists, who always lie when it comes to what scientists really say. By the way, the quote is sourced at http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA113_1.htmlSimilarly, you can easily find information about the evolution of feathers by googling or studying—they appear to have started as thermoregulators.Second, as to your beliefs, I have no problem with them. As I pointed out earlier on this thread, what I object to (and I will let other atheists and/or non-believers speak for themselves) is the unwarranted intrusion of religion into science and politics. Science, because religion has fought tooth and nail against all scientific progress for the last 400 years, still holds to demonstrably false assertions (Adam and Eve, and the story of Noah’s flood being only the most egregious of them), and is still trying to ruin science education in this country by substituting creationism for science. Politics, because a not inconsiderable number of people are trying to turn this country into a theocracy. As long as you are not trying to curtail my freedom, or that of others, I strongly support your right to believe whatever you wish.As for evolution, please read Dawkins’ “The Greatest Show on Earth” or Coyne’s “Why Evolution is True” to get up to speed on the issues involved, and the evidence which shows that the scientific position is not based on faith. Happy studying!

If you are really looking for answers about evolution, then probably a comics forum is not the best place to find the answers. It’s a complicated topic, not suited for short boxes. For popular treatments of the topic, Dawkins is quite good. I’ve never read much on the evolution of sex in particular, but I see from a quick google that there are lots of books on the topic.+Once sex gets going — that is, once reproduction involves the exchange of genetic material — it’s not hard to see how it would continue (granting that it confers some kind of advantage in some situations) — and not hard to see how the two sexes “fit together”. The physiology doesn’t see so complex to me — basically, you need a penis and a vagina. That is, you need an inserter and a receiver. Big deal. Animals of different species can sometimes copulate — think horses and donkeys. The offspring, mules, are infertile, but not because the physiology doesn’t work, but because the two species are not quite similar enough genetically. Lions and tigers, as well. Dogs and wolves — and their offspring are fertile. It’s also worth noting that sexual reproduction doesn’t require the two sexes to fit together — fish by and large don’t copulate.+But perhaps a more fundamental point — science is not a particular set of answers. Scientists come up with different ideas, and those ideas have to be tested against evidence. At any moment, there will be competing ideas. And science is never (yet) complete — it doesn’t claim to have all the answers or the final answers. It does claim that the scientific method gives testable hypotheses, and that the testing of those hypotheses leads to advance in knowledge and understanding. And it has a very good track record.+I’m not hostile to religion, though I have no strong religious impulse myself. I have worked closely in my political work with religious people — I was trained by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and I also worked for the Catholic Worker for a while. I have a lot of respect for what religion means for the people I worked with. (I also learned Latin from a nun, one of my favorite teachers of all time.) But I don’t want religion to make a claim that it can provide answers to scientific questions. There is never a need in science to introduce god as part of any hypothesis or any testing of a hypothesis. The introduction of god as an explanation just stops the scientific process. “Oh, god did it, we don’t have to look any further.” Science always wants to look further.+I might add that my own work concerns the interpretation of poetry. I love science (and this discussion has reminded me of how much fun evolutionary theory is), but I don’t feel that science is the whole of life.

Another footnote — I believe that spiders do sort of copulate, but not with a penis — I believe the male spider basically uses one of his appendages to manage the insertion. Evolution is good at using whatever is handy.

And if you’re looking for really exquisite co-adaptation of sexual reproduction, think about flowering plants. Some plants, such as corn, are simply fertilized by the wind, and they don’t need bees or any other insects to help out. But the reproduction of most flowers depends on the work fertilizing agents, such as bees. So flowers and bees evolved in step with each other. Once you get started on these topics they are endless, and endlessly fascinating.

There’s an insect (I forget which; I thought it was fleas, but no) where the female has no genital opening, and the male actually has to bore a hole into her carapace with his corkscrew-like phallus in order to complete insemination….

Probably no one’s still reading, but Matt Ridley’s book “The Red Queen”, subtitled Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature, is a really outstanding read.

“I heard Steven Hawking say once that after studying the universe for so many years, he didn’t see how there could not be a God.”

I heard Hawking say that, if there is a God, he did nothing but start the ball rolling (i.e. “ignite” the Big Bang), because everything after that is the inevitable result of physical laws.

I can’t imagine that is a true quote from Hawking, a known atheist. I’d have to see a source. Much closer is what fritzoid responded; sourced at Wikiquote you can find this: “I’m not religious in the normal sense. I believe the universe is governed by the laws of science. The laws may have been decreed by God, but God does not intervene to break the laws.” That would mean that Hawking is at most a deist.As for your other points, let me reduce them to two (in a futile attempt not to be prolix ;-). First, as to how evolution itself works, and produced the tens of millions of species that inhabit the earth, requires a book. You mentioned that you were going to look up Richard Dawkins’ book “The Greatest Show on Earth.” That will probably answer the greater portion of your questions; the whole key is in understanding natural selection. Second, as to science having the answers—take the long view. 400 years ago, you would have been told that God/god/the gods were responsible for lightning, disease, weather patterns, ad infinitum. Now, no one believes that—we know what causes lightning and disease, and have a handle on the causes of the weather (although computationally it is too complex of a problem to admit an exact solution; but that does not mean that is has a supernatural cause). The typical god of the gaps argument then retreats to something else—abiogenesis, the nature of consciousness, whatever. But why (again, except for details in the computations, which may be beyond the realm of possibility), should we not think that science will find the answers? And why should we not think that those answers will be progressively more and more correct? Look at your iPhone, radio, car, medicine. Look at the rates of child mortality, or average life expectancies. They all work, as do hundreds and thousands of other things that science has discovered or invented over those 400 years. I’m not saying that technology is an unmitigated blessing—it may yet destroy us all—but that is not the scientists’ fault. Science works, religion does not, and it is a serious logical error to assert that “because science cannot (yet) explain something, religion has the answer.” An error for three reasons—first, it is a god of the gaps argument; second, it is a non sequitur (why not say that “because science cannot (yet) explain something, philosophy has the answer” or “because science cannot (yet) explain something, politics has the answer”? Those statements make just as much (non)sense as the one with religion in the second part of the statement); and third, because even if the argument were valid (it’s not), it would not argue in favor of any particular one of the 10,000 or so human religions there are to choose from.Best Wishes.

Really? Wow … we must live in very different circles. I’ve only ever experienced the opposite.

“So let’s say that life began as a single cell that somehow got to the point that it was able to replicate.”

As I understand it, replication came first, and then cells after. A molecular string adds to itself in sequence, and when it reaches the necessary point it breaks into two identical strings. No cellular structure necessary.

Once you have replication (and it only needs to be “invented” once), you’re off to the races and there’s no turning back. And since the model is “differentiation of multiple species from a smaller number of common ancestral species” (perhaps, but not necessarily, down to one), new species don’t have to develop reproduction techniques from scratch; they adapt (in different directions) what they already have. Asexual reproduction likely predates sexual reproduction, but is less useful in providing genetic variety within a species; nonetheless, asexual reproduction is still out there. Hermaphroditic reproduction (such as among snails and earthworms) likely predates gender differentiation. Gender-differentiated sexual reproduction has also proven very useful (not to mention fun), but hermaphroditic species still abound.

I don’t question anyone’s faith or belief. I admire it all as parts of one. But I can prove there is a God. Man didn’t make the universe. Man is still trying to figure out what it is.

As a matter of fact, people are so funny. Why are you dependant on “scientist”, another man, to prove there is a God? hahaha Do you not believe you are competent enough to answer that as a “man” equally? But you believe in ‘dark matter’, something that you can’t see, hear, feel or smell….don’t even know if it’s dark! The whole concept of ‘dark matter’ is that “scientists” have no proof of what it is or its existence but that they know the galaxies can’t be stable without some other form of gravity. So they call this lack of knowledge ‘dark matter’. THAT! You believe. hahaha Or how you have intuition…some form of knowledge you can’t prove scientifically. Scientists call any sense we can’t prove a 6th sense.