Australian Atheists Forum

I have been told by somebody above me in the chain of thingummy, that Barry is unhappy with his suspension, though he seems unable to tell it from an outright ban.

While I will not go into specifics, it seems that there's much indignation at our sweariness and criticisms of the church and deity he holds dear.

While he views himself as the injured party, it must be remembered that he walked into our saloon and interrupted the darts game.

Apparently the guy who sent him outside to sober up is a TOTAL MONGREL BASTARD too.

Meh. I can live with that.

Still, it's only a week's holiday.

If he still has issues, we can talk then.

If anyone has outstanding questions, perhaps they can be rendered Socratically.

Probably time to drag this old illustration out, too.
If somebody had actually insulted the chappie, rather than an idea or an institution, I'd have acted without fear or favour.

The "report" function lives on the button bar, at the upper right of every post (except, of course, your own). Whatever.

Does anybody here owe that chap a platform?

We're here to communicate. Some people make that almost impossible.

Maybe we can try again in a few days.

For Barry's case and in his excuses for the criminal violence of the RCC we might replace 'ideas' in the above graphic with 'institution'?

Before Barry went for a holiday, I had been mentioning the story of my belief and gradual escape from it, and I had intended to place before him a puzzle.

The nature of the conundrum is this: if I went through all the stages that christianity deems necessary to attain "salvation" with complete honesty, and actually believed in it, what was going on when I finally reached out in desperation, only to find that the god I needed so much just wasn't there?

In a way, it's like that quote from Epicurus:

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.

Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.

Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?

Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”

If that alleged god wanted to be with me, but was busy easing the butthurt of an insulted priest in Marrickville, then the god was weak.

If the notional god could have showed up, but didn't for reasons known only to its ineffable self, then it was, and remains, an arrogant shitstain of a deity, deserving of neither respect nor acknowledgment.

If (other reasons which have nothing to do with the putative deity), then my Very Bad Time happened anyhow, and the god isn't one of the players.

And, since Shit Happened, and god was completely absent, why bother with the notion of a god at all?

Thanks for your insight, Epicurus. It was written before the timeframe of the alleged Jesus, and stands as a fine answer to problems like the one I had.

William of Ockham, that chap who was doing razor adverts long before Gillette got into the biz, is known for a simple logic tool, which basically says that one doesn't need to over-complicate a theory or explanation with unnecessary elements.

You can read my story for yourself if you want: the link's at the top of the post.

Try it both ways; once with a god finding reasons to pike out on a believer, then once with a believer looking for something that was never there anyhow.

See what you come up with.

As for me, I look back on that stretch of sand in the wanky allegorical poem, and realise it doesn't really matter: it's all sand, and a very impermanent thing, especially with sea level rises and erosion.

The tide is coming in, and it's time to go and make a cup of tea. Now, that matters!

Irrev-Black wrote: ↑Sat Aug 19, 2023 9:13 am In a way, it's like that quote from Epicurus

I'm no classical scholar, but the bits of Epicurus that have got through my thick skull have been great. The excerpt from On the Nature of Things in Hitchens' The Portable Atheist includes the idea of atoms, saying that from very very little things, big things grow. It's like Einstein's work as a theoretical physicist, he would invite experimental scientists to test his ideas and find evidence for them, and both the Atomists and Einstein were proved to be right. Brilliant in 1905, but in 270BCE it's a stellar achievement.

The very simple ideas about happiness and the net reduction of suffering are precious too.

Epicurus' elegant summation of the problem of evil is also hard to beat. AFAIK there's no sign that Jesus had heard of it, or had thought of it himself. It's an example of Christianity impeding brain function, you give yourself the same limits he apparently had in his illiterate life 2000 years ago.

Not that I'm going to worship Epicurus, even my cursory knowledge has uncovered the odd bit of silliness, for example his recommendation (via Lucretius) that sex should be done doggy style to improve the chances of conception.

Barryk wrote: ↑Thu Aug 17, 2023 10:55 pm

Irrev-Black wrote: ↑Thu Aug 17, 2023 10:24 pm

Please, that's not necessary. Your post to Joele is quite visible, immediately above.

Perhaps it would help more if you concentrated on citing your sources a little more clearly.

Sorry, I meant to list the sources, see above. I deleted my duplicate comment, still on my L plates.

This is a moderator note, and I think I'll do them in red from here on instead of using that yellow highlighter.

@Barryk might read it if he comes back, but otherwise it's for any reader, so my typing's not wasted.

"Citing a source" is more than just telling us "Prophylaxis of Condom wrote about it in 123 CE", or "Apologist99 made a YouTube video that explains it, go watch his series".

The notion that words can inherently be bad is a bad idea. It springs from primitive beliefs about words being magical. Similarly, the intellectual coward's retreat from debate under the banner of 'my opponent swears' is rooted in the same notion. It also provides them with an easy escape route, and in this sense it is offered up as a service: allowing them to exit with the personal sense that they have retained the moral high ground, even if they have been unable to support their own arguments.

It's common courtesy to provide the actual words, and a more exact reference point so those words can be seen in context.

There's even a biblically-based phrase to describe this level - "Chapter and Verse".

It's also a common courtesy to clearly identify the source if using text from another person or document.

Let's all do the right thing. There should be more happiness.

Irrev-Black wrote: ↑Fri Aug 18, 2023 12:47 pm (SNIP)

I rarely quote Dawkins, but here goes!

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

I'd also like to know how BarryK reconciles that villainous Old Testament, dick-obsessed, despot with New Testament Jesus and the nicey-nicey heavenly father who's content to sit back and say he's well pleased with how sonny-boy is doing.

So many questions.

And I should have provided some references.

Thanks to The Skeptic's Annotated Bible, I'll throw in a few choice ones. The full list of god-the-father nastinesses is long indeed.

Genesis
I will destroy ... both man and beast."
God is angry. He decides to destroy all humans, beasts, creeping things, fowls, and "all flesh wherein there is breath of life." He plans to drown them all. 6:7, 17

All flesh died that moved upon the earth."
God drowns everything that breathes air. From newborn babies to koala bears -- all creatures great and small, the Lord God drowned them all. 7:21-23

God sends a plague on the Pharaoh and his household because the Pharaoh believed Abram's lie. 12:17

God tells Abram to kill some animals for him. The needless slaughter makes God feel better. 15:9-10

God kills everyone (men, women, children, infants, newborns) in Sodom and Gomorrah by raining "fire and brimstone from the Lord out of heaven." Well, almost everyone -- he spares the "just and righteous" Lot and his family. 19:24

Lot's nameless wife looks back, and God turns her into a pillar of salt. 19:26

"And Er, Judah's firstborn, was wicked in the sight of the Lord; and the Lord slew him." What did Er do to elicit God's wrath? The Bible doesn't say. Maybe he picked up some sticks on Saturday. 38:7

After God killed Er, Judah tells Onan to "go in unto they brother's wife." But "Onan knew that the seed should not be his; and ... when he went in unto his brother's wife ... he spilled it on the ground.... And the thing which he did displeased the Lord; wherefore he slew him also." This lovely Bible story is seldom read in Sunday School, but it is the basis of many Christian doctrines, including the condemnation of both masturbation and birth control. 38:8-10

God brought a seven year, "very grievous" famine on the whole earth for no apparent reason (except maybe to make Joseph wealthy). 41:25-32, 54

That's ONE book out of sixty-six.

So, this supposedly all-loving being has set up a whole species, just to fail to meet a bunch of rules he made, so he can do the equivalent of being a creepy primary school boy, sitting up the back, pulling the wings and legs off flies?


Here, read the lot if you wish.

Anybody unable to see the cruelty may have problems.

Anyway, looks like the Dawkins quote was justified.

two dogs wrote: ↑Fri Aug 18, 2023 3:42 pm

Barryk wrote: ↑Fri Aug 18, 2023 3:10 pm

two dogs wrote: ↑Fri Aug 18, 2023 3:03 pmFFS, so now the canonical gospels are works of historians (people who study and write about the fuckin' past) rather than eye-witness accounts? Try to keep your story straight!

Hi 2 dogs, saying “fuckin” hardly strengthens your comments.
...

For what it's worth, I write "fuckin'" not "fuckin", as the use of the apostrophe is grammatically important to me to indicate my intended elision of the ending "g". And that's also how I say it (quite often) in real life.

My proclivity for swearing (whatever that is) reminds me of my dad berating me when I was in my teens with "every second bloody word that comes out of your mouth is 'bloody'".

It might be time for @Barryk to become acquainted with Goldenmane's Third Rule Of Public Discourse.

In short,

The notion that words can inherently be bad is a bad idea. It springs from primitive beliefs about words being magical. Similarly, the intellectual coward's retreat from debate under the banner of 'my opponent swears' is rooted in the same notion. It also provides them with an easy escape route, and in this sense it is offered up as a service: allowing them to exit with the personal sense that they have retained the moral high ground, even if they have been unable to support their own arguments.

Hurr, hurr! He said "rooted"!

@Barryk - you say the catholic organisation is good and charitable.

NSW: The Catholic church is seeking to use using the death of a “prolific paedophile” priest to permanently prevent a dying Indigenous man from seeking justice for alleged abuse suffered on camping trips in rural New South Wales. Two survivors are suing the church’s Armidale diocese for the alleged abuse by notorious priest David Joseph Perrett during camping trips from an Aboriginal mission in the mid-1970s. The church is now using Perrett’s death in a bid to shut down civil cases brought by the same survivors against the Armidale diocese. (17 Aug 2023)

How is denying a victim even a chance at justice "charitable"?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/ ... ourt-hears

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/ ... awyers-say

It takes a village to raise a child, but as the catholic church demonstrates, it also takes a village to abuse a child. In this case, the village is the catholic church's entire infrastructure, which here and all around the world, appears to be dedicated to protecting its own wealth at the expense of its many tens of thousands of victims.

A vile illegal institution that is at least partly sustained by its cowardly defenders.

I couldn't give a fuck if Barryk comes back and defends his beliefs in myths and fantasies, but defending the RCC is on a different level, in my opinion, given that this organisation continues, everywhere, to spend its tax free dollars on an army of lawyers to prevent justice for its victims.

Lets be clear, this is not a 'few bad apples' here, really it never was. This is the full power of the institution itself. Perhaps if Barryk returns he might answer this: What percentage of priests need to be identified as abusers for the 'few bad apples' excuse to be abandoned? Is it 10%? Is it 50%? What's the number you're after? At what point does 'a few bad apples' become systemic crime?

And, you know, if this organisation is meant to reflect some kind of supernatural god, the god you're all worshiping is an anti-human psychopath. Alternatively, the church is a failed reflection of a god worth worshiping, in which case, why defend it?