Bill Maher vs Sen. Mark Pryor: "Religulous" Talking Snake
By John Amato Tuesday Aug 19, 2008 5:00pm 
Maher...You're a Senator. You are one of the very few people are really running this country. It worries me that people are running my country, who think, who believe in a talking snake.
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Heather:
A clip from Maher's movie Religulous. He's debating Mark Pryor on whether he actually believes a literal interpretation of the Bible.
(7 min clip)
Check out the trailer here.
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Pryor has the IQ of a fence post.
The "Do you believe in evolution?" question is kindof loaded if you're gonna segway into the talking snake argument. The talking snake thing is a myth about the origin of life, not the further development of it. It makes it sound like evolution is a theory about the origin of life, which it's not. If he went from the big bang to the talking snake, I think it would've been more appropriate. Still, the movie looks funny.
You're doing the same thing. The big bang isn't the origin of life, but the origin of the universe. What you mean to say is that Maher should have asked whether the senator believes the anthropic principle. But he wouldn't have known what that is, and I'm betting neither do you.
FYI the title of the film is 'Religulous'.
As in: Religion is ridiculous.
ciloisin @ 1:
made of untreated wood
People don't like to be made to feel stupid. Especially stupid people.
I'm a bright-blue-egg in a flaming red nest here in MN.
guessing my neighbors won't be watching this at the Lagoon Theater with me this fall.
go Bill, go!
I saw the clip in Larry King last night.
It was ....well I'm not quite sure, maybe interesting. A man of power talking about creation like it's some cut a dried matter.
The thing from Mahers interview that absolutley floored me is that your country actually has an amusment park called HOLY LAND.
Someone please tell me
Do people actually pay money to go to a place like this?
"No free man needs a god." - Nabokov
I'm worried, too, when the standard for leadership is being willing to perform a self-excision of the reality-integrating portion of the mind, and extending these surgical tools to others. Especially children. Just say no.
"You don't have to pass an IQ test to be in the senate, though."
So, is Pryor admitting that it's stupid to believe, as he and millions of Americans apparently do, in the biblical story of creation? And is he proud of being so stupid?
When I tried to answer # 7 I get a big W and somebody wants my username and password. Tried it 3 times. Weird.
[Thanks. I'll let the techs know UPDATE: The quote function on this thread has been fixed-Sitemonitor]
"You can fool some of the people some of the time...." and make a pretty good living at it.
Mike the Canuck @ 7:
Hey, they would have called it Holy Wood, but they have termites on the brain.
You go Bill. Tell these blind w/blinders to 'get real'. A 'belief' is just that. Proof is just that. Let me look and just some of the rules, You can't see me, I clam to created everything, if you don't believe me, I'll set you on fire forever. I love you and I'm good. If you speak against me in any way, back to the fire forever. I can't be questened. You can't ask me why I didn't stop WWI,WWII or any war or bad thing that has happened on Earth. You can't ask me why my son's face appears on a pizza,potato chip,dog food or tree bark. You just worship me because I said so,without question. My 10 comandments say not to killl, but I can 'allow' millions to die. If anything good happens, I get the credit. If anything bad happens,blame the devil,which I allow to exsist.......oh pleeeeeeeeeeeeze.
Bill Maher does'nt like people who believe in talking snakes, [Deleted. I took you out of automod because I thought you could handle it. Do you need to have us keep reading all of your posts before they go up? It kind of stifles the conversation for you, doesn't it? Sitemonitor]
This guy is a tool and a huge part of the "establishment". Can anyone not see that this whole thing was staged to make people think Maher is some sort of rebel?
Laughable at best.
I just had an extremely frustrating conversation (debate/argument...whatever) with a friend, relating to Warren's recent Q&A Forum with Obama and McCain.
I asked her why she felt Warren has the authority to vet our potential President's, based on their religious beliefs (inserting scriptures and questions relating to "evil" into the equation) , etc. and she was horrified that I didn't understand just how powerful this man is, and how many followers he has. When I mentioned that James Dobson broadcasts on 1'000's of stations worldwide, and is followed by more than 220 million people in 164 countries...and that he thinks the planet is only 6,000 years old, doesn't believe in evolution, and believes in Adam and Eve, she said that was different...and that people wanted to hear Warren's questions because...he's more like real Americans...and Americans want to know these things.
When I asked her if she believed in separation of church and state, she said "of course."
Then, when I asked if she felt a President's ability to lead and make decisions was related to his or her religious beliefs she said "of course."
That's when the conversation turned ugly.
SlaveryIsFreedom Says: [Deleted. Off topic-Sitemonitor]
Do you get out much?
Read much?
Good lord...
LOL! You don't have to pass an IQ test to be in the senate! My God! This is amazing. How this guy got elected is beyond me. Just goes to show you how dumb the American people are!
wisedup @ 14:
Awesome!
Bill Maher, Chris Matthews, and Sheila Jackson-Lee are all failures in my opinion.
LOL. Reminds me of "Kissing Hanks Ass"..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDp7pkEcJVQ
http://www.jhuger.com/kisshank.php
Classic!
O.K. Bill,
Sign me up with the rest of the 16%. Sounds like some potential for a t-shirt, "16% and growing".
I know what you mean. Its an actual decision to actually reject religion, and not merely ignore it. I've done that. It feels a bit empty at first, but you move on and realize, you are O.K. Its all such nonsense, because it allows "man" to write their own rules, stories and dogma and ascribe to "God" and "Jesus" things that never happened, because it all "happened" so long ago!
Warren is correct on one thing though. No atheist (in my lifetime) will be elected to even a Congressional seat. Heck, (have to reject both sides of the religion) I've seen city council elections where religion pops up. For damn sure school district seats are part of the right-wing agenda (they can have one too, and it doesn't have to be given a higher status).
I had a friend that is a "promise keeper", he asked me I wanted to join. I told him as respectfully as I could that I didn't need the support of other's rules to know what is right and wrong (at least for me). I love my wife and kids, try not to cheat or lie, don't steal, treat other with respect. Needless to say "friend" gone!
So, if you want to be a beacon against rampant stupidity, Bill, I'll cover your back as best as I can. I'm sick of the influence that religious "leader" have over the unthinking and weak. Yes, thats it. Call it faith if you want, but at some point some sort of empiricism is necessary, and not the finding of the foundation of an old church, that just proof of previous stupidity.
Go Bill! Can't wait for the screen opening. Any suggested books anyone?
Mike the Canuck @ 7:
Sure, why not? People pay money to go to Vegas to see the Eiffel Tower, Venice, and the pyramids, so, why not?
Oh goodie another anti-CHristian hate fest.
Is this how you people respond to Obama's being behind in the polls?
By trying to alienate people?
There's a great book out called the Atheist's Bible.
In it you will find the best arguments I have ever seen against religion. Many of them from people like Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Napoleon Bonaparte and Albert Einstein to name few.
I read it and no religious nut have ever won an argument with me since.
yakfitguy @ 25:
lol Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Napoleon Bonaparte and Albert Einstein where all theists.
Einstein was neither. He did not believe in a personal god. He was a Humanist, who declared himself an agnostic in a letter. Another letter quotes him as stating "The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish"
Napolean was a renowned anti-Semite, so he is hardly a glowing example of religion. Jefferson was a Deist, who did not believe in the divinity of Jesus, and Ben Franklin's parents were so deeply religious, he can hardly be cited as a glowing example.
As the risk of using Godwins law, the person most commonly cited as being an Atheist, and therefore "pure evil" was Hitler, when in actual fact he was extremely religious, held strong beliefs in the occult and paranormal, and spent a great deal of time and money seeking the "Holy Grail"
The existence of God cannot be proven or disproved. This issue has been debated for thousands of years without resolution. If you still argue over religion: you are a blind man in a dark room on a dark night searching for a black cat that ain't there.
As I've said before, I fear the Stupids are winning.
[Deleted. Off topic. How very adult-Sitemonitor] ...How very adult.
Lets just remember that, in spite of his religious beliefs, he is a democrat and one that is part of our razor thin majority. He is not nearly as objectionable as Asa Hutchinson, who was the first Rethug senator from Arkansas since Reconstruction and led the charge for Clinton's impeachment, although he was, as we say, crooked as a dog's leg. So, he is entitled to his beliefs and Pryor doesn't try to force his beliefs on anyone. He is not a lunatic like Santorum or Boosh and he is on our side. Also, his father David Pryor was a very respected member of the Senate and by the way, sometimes Bill Maher's smugness is an awful lot like a liberal Ann Coultergeist (his X girlfriend). So consider a few things before you jump on Pryor.
#24 if being a hard core christian is the way you want to live your life, good for you. but stay the fuck out of mine.
orcas @ 27:
The anti-theists aren't interested in being right they're just hate filled and this is how they get their jollies.
orcas @ 27:
Is that so? You see, for me, it's really rather straightforward.
If there were a God and he/she are compassionate, loving and omniscient then the whole argument falls on its face when you take into account the millions of orphaned children who lost their parents due to war, disease or hunger. This doesn't take into account the billions of other innocent human beings who have died at the hands of ruthless leaders notwithstanding Cheney and BushCo.
So, at the end of the day, if there is a God, he's one vengeful, arbitrary, clueless creature who's opinion and powers I could care less about. And therefore, that God, is not really a God as the word signifies.
Problem solved.
ciloisin @ 1:
Give him some credit. He seems to know he's a fence post.
Obviously, you don't have to pass an IQ test to be president either.
McDuff @ 33:
My dog will never understand why I take him to the vet for shots.
Doesn't mean I don't love him.
I just will never understand how with all of the crimes that have come to light recently regarding the Bush regimes overthrow of our country and the Constitution, that the one single key event that let all of this come to be...is completely a forbidden topic on this site.
(I feel that little red "banned" icon coming when I press submit)
McDuff @ 33:
Post #27 says it perfectly, you can neither prove, nor disprove, the theory of evolution. There is no 'missing link' and this argument can go on interminably without resolution.
Maher is just trying to cash in on sandbagging people's personal beliefs. He sounds like more of an asshole than I thought he was.
26 someguy:
Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Napoleon Bonaparte and Albert Einstein were deists, not theists.
He believes in snake in the Simpsons?
All RIGGGHT!!!
I saw the clip on LKL last night too...I particularly liked the pregnant pause...nine months pregnant...after the good senator said the i.q. remark.
LOL - I thought Larry King had developed a little speech impediment there. He was, of course, correct:
"Religulous"
All religious people "believe" in one form of delusional garbage or another. Don't confuse them with facts. Their minds are made up.
Talking snakes, magic underwear, business is better than gobmint, they all live outside the domain of rational thought.
They are not qualified to be in government and they are not qualified to participate in our democracy in any way.
Voting and assessing government performance requires rationality.
Religion blows!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Chris H. @ 40:
Einstein wasn't a deist and neither was Jefferson I'm not sure about the other two but I do know deists are theists.
[Deleted. Off topic-Sitemonitor]
Go Bill, good on ya. I'm an atheist and I live a nice, friendly life with no animosity towards anyone. I stand on my own two feet, turn my own corners and I don't need anyone telling me to live this way or that way or to believe in an imaginary person. Bill's so right when he says that *anyone* who claims to know what happens in the afterlife is blowing smoke up their you know what. Religion, the duping cult business, will eventually disappear but not for a while, unfortunately.
Can't wait to see the movie.
someguy:
Do you have proof that Einstein or Jefferson weren't deists. They've made it clear in their writings they were. Also, deists aren't theists.
odanny @ 39:
Post #27 says you can't prove or disprove a god. This is because there is no evidence for any god. The more characteristics one attributes to this "god", the less the likelihood that that particular god exists.
Regarding the theory of evolution, this is a scientific theory, which simply means it is the best explanation that fits the mountain of evidence that is currently available.
The funny thing is that Bill Maher believes very strongly in something he just can't explain what it is or why.
If there is no God, then everything George Bush has done is right. If there is no God, then hate is OK and attacking homosexuals is perfectly acceptable, if you can get away with it. If there is no God, then 9/11 was OK because what the fuck difference does it makes ultimately?
By attacking religious leaders at least Bill Maher is following Jesus' example because if you ever read the New Testament you'd see that's a good deal of what Jesus did.
I have to see this movie!!!
Chris H. @ 48:
I have the word of Dawkins that Einstien wasn't a deist and the words of Jefferson himself that he was a Unitarian.
PS deists are still theists.
The Rude Bellman @ 50:
Following this line of logic, it amazes me that humans survived to the era when the Hebraic God was "born". We must have really been a nasty lot prior to that.
@51
Links?
or 52
Is there a reason my quotes aren't working?
[If you are using IE7, that would be your answer. Just copy and paste-Sitemonitor]
#22 - This may have already been stated, but there is an avowed atheist in Congress: Pete Stark.
But your point is well taken,otherwise. The American public can't make up its mind about religion and anything else (Evangelicals aside, of course). For instance, 40% of them are Young Earth Believers, yet I'm sure many of them will routintely a story (paper, online) describing some scientific discovery, dating something back a couple of million years, or even hundreds of thousands of years, and there won't be any bell ringing in their minds telling them this can't be true because....the Earth is only 6,000 years old. They're schizophrenic in this regard. Which comes through in polls. And since so many are susceptible to being manipulated by snakeoil salesmen
for their religion, it's no wonder that in politics they aren't much wiser.
The trouble is though, that the Bible never says snake, it says serpent. Additionally, in Genesis the serpent is not equated with the Devil. In fact, during the late Medieval/Renaissance period it was identified with Lilith, the terrestial Adam's first wife (not the cosmic Adam Kadmon.) Lilith was shown tempting Eve the Younger with the forbidden fruit (never identified as an apple, perhaps a pomegranate, long held to be a fertility symbol in the Middle East.)
Lilith as the serpent can be found in a woodcut by Lucas Cranach 1522, in a woodcut by Holzchmitt 1470, in a painting found in the Osterreichischen Nationalebibliothek Vienna (my source doesn't give a date.) Lilith as the serpent with the fruit can often be found on the base of Virgin and Child statues (echoes of Isis and Horus), for example on a Flemish 15th century CE sculpture found in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Cloister's Collection.
As for the snake that was how the Greek/Pelagian creater Goddess Eurynome impregnated herself with. Such representations of these and the Persian first couple shaped later Christian belief. The apple was taken from Green Mythology as well, the Isle of the Hesperides, but can also be found on divine islands in both the Celtic story of the Son's of Tuirinn and Arthur on Avalloch (Avalon: Isle of apples) The Norse believed a maiden Goddess named Idun gave the Aesir gods apple of immortality.
Beef Jerky @ 49:
...well, maybe the second best...
ysbaddaden @ 57:
You're stirring the pot, bringing up the murky past. Lets just read the Bible, or listen to the preacher, and leave it at that. ;)
Chris H. @ 55:
Off the top of my head I remember that Dawkins was talking about Anthony Flew and placed his deist views as being somewhere between Darwins and Einstien.
As for Jefferson in the last years of his life he made it clear in a letter to Doc. Ben Rush that he wished a Unitarian Church was in the area and that he was a Unitarian.
Brad @ 58:
Let's not and help make the world a better place.
45 someguy
Actually the only term available to describe the religious beliefs of Einstein and Jefferson is Deism. Einstein said about Quantum Mechanics, "God doesn't play dice with the Universe." To him God was so abstract that It could be like a mathematical formula. Perhaps that's what drove him to find a Unifying Theory/Equation (he never found.) Thomas Jefferson was a Deist in the tradition of the time. This was an impersonal God that started the Universe and then stepped back to let forces of Nature, and Man take over from there. The Jeffersonian deity wasn't particularly concerned about how we behaved. Jefferson took a razorblade to the Bible and cut out the parts he thought were too superstitious, and it is now available in print.
Too many people make the same mistake as the Fundies, making God human, a monarch or a father-figure, not only a creater, but decreeing laws and punishing the infractions thereof, a medievalist view, even though it may be an "atheist" expounding on it in the negative.
Right @ 60:
OK. Existance exists. It's axiomatic. No Creator needed.
58 Brad Says: ysbaddaden @ 57:
You’re stirring the pot, bringing up the murky past. Lets just read the Bible, or listen to the preacher, and leave it at that. ;)
Actually that would be cauldron, otherwise you'd be right.
The problem with stirring the pot is it's almost impossbile to get all the seeds and stems out.
ciloisin @ 1:
That smart, huh?
ysbaddaden @ 62:
Funny I'm pretty sure Einstein knew what deism was and he didn't identify with it.
And Jefferson identified with the Unitarian Church.
ysbaddaden @ 64:
Geez your pot has stems and seeds? My condolences ys. I'll pray for you to find a better supplier.
61 Right Says: Brad @ 58:
ysbaddaden @ 57:
You’re stirring the pot, bringing up the murky past. Lets just read the Bible, or listen to the preacher, and leave it at that. ;)
Let’s not and help make the world a better place.
Better for who?
That's the whole basis for war, whether theological or secular.
ysbaddaden @ 64:
I started drawing witches sitting in cauldrons (behind them actually, but ...)at 5 y/o, and soon had mom reading greek myths from encyclopedias. That got me into reading.
ysbaddaden @ 57:
Hmm. It seems to me then, the serpent could be a kind of Promethean figure who brings man a sort of intellectual fire. After all, the serpent is used in many cultures as a symbol of medicine and health because of its revitalization after shedding its skin.
Beef Jerky @ 70:
Knowledge of good and evil. Ethics. Not a good quality for simple gardener-slaves walking with "gods." The species became over-qualified.
I can't wait for this movie to not show at my local theater.
The Pryor quote: "The scientific community is a little divided." is incomplete. The interview actually went:
Maher: "Do you believe in evolution?"
Pryor: "You know my... Of course, I don't know. Clearly, the scientific community is a little divided on some of the specifics of that."
Maher interjected with a statement that they "pretty much agree" to indicate that we, as scientists, are not in disagreement on evolution. In a certain sense, both are correct. In terms of whether evolution happened, there is no disagreement and the point goes to Maher. Pryor also gets a point for using the term "specifics." In fact, as an evolutionary biologist myself (Ph.D., 1975 but did not compete with the likes of S.J. Gould or R.Dawkins), there is controversy at the level of detail. Some examples, first, did birds evolve from dinosaurs or from another reptilian group? Second, did the protoavians live on the ground and develop flight from the ground up or did these forms already live in trees and develop flight from the trees down? There are controversies in all aspects of evolution. Gould points out that if you go to a conference of paleontologists you will discover that "we don't agree very much." I think that's from "Wonderful Life" but the sentiment appears in other places. In fact, it's controversy that keeps us going.
The problem is that Creationists and their ilk take minor controversies of detail having nothing to do with the theory and magnify them to questions that make science look like a disorganized morass of competing ideas that ultimately deny the theory. Pryor and many others are simply not close enough to science to know or understand the meaning of words like "theory."
70 Beef Jerky
And actually you'd be right. In the occult the salamander, a different kind of lizard, is the personification of fire. In the medieval period people would burn the livers of snakes on their rooftops to prevent lightening strikes destroying their homes (don't know how many of their homes weren't burned down.) Prometheus was a trickster god (actually a Titan who's mother was Gaea) who brought fire to the people as well as intelligence, after his brother created us, but gave us nothing unique like the claws and furs and fangs of other animals. Trickster gods can be dangerous though like the Norse Loki, who became in effect a Viking Atlas. But they often champion humankind at the expense and consternation of the Gods. African and Amerindian legends are chock full of trickster gods of various myriad forms, snakes were one of them, but there were also ravens, coyotes (my favorite) spiders and hares.
"Eeeeh, whassup doc!"
Einstein believed God was science and Science was god. he was an atheist when it came to the super friend in the sky
and evolution is a fact we see it everywhere, the details are the theory.
General Insurance @ 58:
Whoa. Firefox choked on that one:
Man created pasta; therefore, pasta created man.
71 Brad
That's what happened in the Persian mythos. I've never heard names of these first parents, but mankind was created to be slaves working in the Gardens of the Gods.
Funny thing, when I was 17 years old I was discussing with this other guy, a fundie, that I thought the story of the fall of Adam and Eve meant be careful what you ask for, because you might get it. He asked me to explain. I said they ate the fruit of wisdom, and perhaps they couldn't learn wisdom in the garden, but had to suffer to acquire it. In other words, leave the nursery, and become adults.
He told me that was a blasphemous idea.
Personally, I think fundies would chuck the whole idea of the Genesis creation (except the vain ones who want to believe we're in God's image,) as long as they didn't have to chunk the Fall of the progenitors. Their thinking is if there's no original sin, there's no need for salvation, the cornerstone of their faith. That's why they oppose evolution so avidly.
Pryor may be insanely stupid in his faith, but Maher's the definition of douchebag. He smugly paints all people of faith with the same slanderous brush, ignoring just how complex a social phenomenon religion is. Biblical literalists may be intellectually lazy, but Maher and others like him (Zeitgeist comes to mind) are just as lazy in their analyis.
Maher's a wanker, and his film is nothing more than an opportunity to masturbate to his own percieved intellectual superiority as he pisses people off.
patrick @ 73:
Nice sound bite problem is Einstein wasn't an atheist and his ideas on a number of matters didn't fit into sound bites.
Praise Bob!!!
Now I have to go watch my new dvd of Futurama.
Beef Jerky @ 75:
ahh, your original post has since been touched by his noodly appendage - good for you!
Rick Warren ignores Jesus and what He taught, and the Ten Commandments. RW lies from the pulpit, and lets McCain lie in his church.
Neither mcCain nor warren is a Christian, becasue they refuse the teachings of Christ and that is the bottom line.
Morality, kindness, goodness, compassion and "doing the right thing" aren't dependent on, or related to, belief in a supernatural being. The most moral, decent and integrity-filled person I know is an atheist. Conversely, some of the most vile, wicked, duplicitous and hypocritical people on the planet (you can fill in the blanks; the candidates are many) are "religious."
It's all hokum.
God is a fat kid with a magnifying glass and we are ants in the anthill being fried.
You can have a "Christ consciousness" without believing in Jesus' supposed divinity. He was simply an evolved and enlightened fellow, and that is all.
ysbaddaden @ 77:
70 Beef Jerky
I just reread the rest of your comment. I'm drunk right now, and wanna check out Lela's rack.
The snake was the symbol of the Greek God Herme's messenger staff. As a messenger of the Gods he became like an imbodiment of the idea and the ideal (setting aside for the moment the animus and the anima/Eros and Psyche). Eventually Herme snaked staff became the symbol of the Greek God of Medicine Asklepios. In the areas of the world where they believe in a local version of what the Greeks called Cyclos Geneseon, and the Romans called Metapsychosis, the snake represented reincarnation with his shedding of the skin.
Christians had some belief in reincarnation until the doctrine was anathemized, along with the teachings of Origines Adamantius (Don't drink...don't smoke...what do you do...), at the Council of Nicea in 325 CE, where the Nicene Creed was formalized.
Do people who make beef jerky beat their meat?
86 Brad Says: ysbaddaden @ 77:
We can’t climb back into the womb. We have a greater destiny.
Breaking The GODSPELL
Speak for yourself. There's at least one part of me I want to get as close as possible.
I hope this isn't the last of hurrah of free thinkers. I've enjoyed discovering that there are others in the world scratching their head about religion.
ysbaddaden @ 87:
Entwined serpents representing the DNA helix, perhaps.
ysbaddaden @ 77
Damn man, I hadn't actually considered that perspective. The Genesis Creation story is a swimming with metaphors (advent of agriculture, hubris, sex, consulting with other religious traditions, retooling old myths to contrast Jehova with the less benevolent gods of other faiths, etc.), it would not come as a surprise to me if it also spoke of the Fall as an act of immaturity and perversion of God's intended means of spiritual growth. Bravo, good sir.
It sickens me that the faithful can be so small-minded. To read the Bible literally-particularly Genesis-does insult to the authors and usually detracts from their intended messages.
Fools. Even if humans are descended from the same line that gave rise to modern apes, does that really change what Jesus did or who he was?
Don @ 56:
Don,
Thanks, didn't know about Pete Stark, must be a great person to get elected with that on his back.
That would be akin to Buddhism. Trying to become a boddhisvata (an enlightned one.) 85 BigIslandDave Christ consciousness would be essentially making him an avatara (the original eastern version of a messiah.) I agree with you. However, that would put us at odds with the Church Councils involving Nestorian and Monophysite heresies.
This is what happens in a Country where political candidates court voters with such crap as 'faith based initiatives.'
Brad @ 90:
That would require someone waaaaaaaay back then knowing what the DNA helix looked like.
Not that I'm being closed minded.
Beef Jerky @ 49:
I dont disagree with a word of that. However the laws of probability rest on the existence of a divine creator of the evolution of man, it's a fact Republicans shamelessly exploit the religious "right's inability to keep track of politics and use abortion as their wedge issue in getting their votes, usually enmasse, like sheep going to slaughter
God, Guns, and Abortion. Take away any of the three and Republicans would likely lose every election.
someguy @ 45:
Wrong---according to Wikipedia and other sources:
"...Jefferson's religion is fairly typical of the form of American DEISM in his day."
Meditating Upside-Down @ 91:
Personally I think that Genesis makes at least three references to evolution.
someguy @ 95:
That would require someone waaaaaaaay back then knowing what the DNA helix looked like.
Not that I'm being closed minded.
Good. Intruiging images, including Enki in the dress.
samdog @ 97:
"according to Wikipedia"? lol
Try looking into jefferson's own writing.
70 Beef Jerky
The snake was a potent fertility symbol across most of the ancient world (not just limited to the staff of Hermes), and was generally associated with regeneration and wisdom. The use of the serpent in Genesis is likely a reference to an earlier or contemporaneous serpent cult (they used to be all over the Middle East, particularly during the 6th century BCE when Genesis was compiled). The insular Hebrews, so obsessed as they were with keeping themselves distinct from other faiths, found in the snake a powerful symbol to demonize as a trickster, perverting its supposed wisdom to lead others to ruin.
oZer @ 6:
In Minnesota? I'm shocked. I though MN was one of those high i.q. blue states. Did the idiot red disease spread north? Damn these stupid red states are going to screw us over again!
91 Meditating Upside-Down Says: ysbaddaden @ 77
(I)t would not come as a surprise to me if it also spoke of the Fall as an act of immaturity and perversion of God’s intended means of spiritual growth.
I think it was St Augustus who disdained child birth, where everyone first appears between where a woman urinates and where she defecates. The idea was exactly what you said spiritual growth. Whether that meant every living thing had to die first, or one could somehow procreate spritually I think was unanswered because of the "Fall" and all else was speculative. My memory is getting shaky due to the alcohol I'm imbibing, but I think it was the Cathars who did not approve of marriage and children, but did approve of premarital sex.
Maybe we should find Jesus in the Apes.
90 Brad
That's a good parallelity and I shall use it. You see my theory (not original) is that religion provides much of the symbolism of the individual's Morphean imagery as well as the Jungian archetypes. Modern dream research shows we practice the days events, and the events yet to come, in our dreams, thus becoming more efficient at our tasks. Religion in it's idealized state (if we may wax Platonian), provides these dreams.
Think of it this way, did astrology lead to astronomy, alchemy to chemistry, palmistry and phrenology to studying the anatomy? When religious scholars were debating how many angels could dance on a head of a pin, where they in effect preparing their minds for microscopic studies? The way religious scholars quibble over religious minutiae over what is written, was that a direct predecessor of Parliamentarian procedure, where everything must have a precedent (in Common Law.)?
Okay, now I'm boring myself.
98 someguy
...Okay dude, you lost me. I'm a theistic evolutionist, but I've never seen anything in Genesis to suggest the books authors knew anything about evolution.
Could you please point out the passages you're talking about?
someguy @ 24:
In the 23 comments before yours, no hate was forthcoming. This has nothing to do with hatred (though, those of us who have no faith are very often the target of it). Religion should be discussed like any other topic.
I don't use Wikpedia, never have and never will. I go by memory (using better sources on the internet to check my spelling occassionally). But I'm at home on my dial-up making that not an option, but I do have my books around me.
someguy @ 26:
I do not know what Bonaparte was. Ben Franklin was a deist. Thomas Jefferson a very agnostic deist. Einstein a pantheist, or an atheist of poetic disposition.
someguy @ 32:
How good of you to paint all of us as hate-filled. The stereotype is not appreciated.
sorry anyone who does not believe in a talking snake....
HASN'T BEEN WATCHING MCCAIN OR LIARMAN VERY LONG
BigIslandDave @ 85:
Amen.
someguy @ 45:
No. Deists believe in an intelligence that created the universe, and retired -- one that does not interfere in the universe any longer.
Theists believe in a personal god, one who hears and answers prayers. It is a very big difference.
Karen @ 107:
Jefferson was a Unitarian.
Observing from the least religious country in the world (Sweden) it blows my mind that only 16% of the American population are atheists/agnostics (about 85% over here). Anyway just wanted to say hello from the "darksided" Sweden :D love your page.
BigD145 @ 34:
I found him very down to earth and open to criticism and discussion. That's a very good quality in someone, even if you disagree.
Karen @ 111:
To be a theist one need only believe that God(s) exist.
boysetsfire @ 113:
Agnostics are cowards anyway:P
104 Meditating Upside-Down Says:
When I was a teenager 30 something years ago, I read a book by a Rabbi attempting to reconcile the Biblical Genesis and Evolution. He pointed out that some of the steps are in a different order, but overall the schema was the same. The appearance of light and darkness and an unformed world, the formation of the world, vegetation and verdure appearing, life appearing in the sea and then on land, and lastly man. His idea was the soil from which Adam was made could be likened to normal processes like coming from a lesser form (a terrestial form), but in a religious sense what made him man came from God, the breath of life (and perhaps inspiration.) Of course the biggest problem of all is where all conceived female and only later does the y chromosome kick in altering us.
However the myths, with the symbols in this order are common throughout the world, and sound a bit like a typical sunrise in descriptive language.
someguy @ 112:
I'll take the latter on Einstein.
Nikola @ 118:
Funny he didn't call himself one.
Keep it up the aloof condescension...
As a person of faith, and a democrat, this is why I find it awfully hard to pull the lever that way....
odanny @ 39:
We cannot empirically prove anything. Nevertheless, evidence makes some claims very, very, very, very probably true. Evolution is one such claim backed by mountains of evidence. That is why it has earned the exalted status of theory in science.
There is no "missing link" because there is no such thing as a missing link. At least, not the one evolution's detractor's posit.
Maher is advancing disbelief in god. Of course, he's cashing in on it. It doesn't mean that he's insincere.
Non-believers are not trying to "sandbag" other people's beliefs. Just challenge them. We have long been reviled, told that we're the cause of the world's problems, that we're nihilists and amoral.
We're no longer silent. Answer the arguments we make. Don't just impute improper motives upon us.
The schema I've seen is Deity(ies) described by proximity and action:
Removed/Involved (Theist)
Removed/Uninvolved (Deist)
Close/Involved (Punishing sins, the personal god of Fundamentalist/evangelicals.)
Close/Uninvolved Continuing Creation, no real interest in what we do. The Laws have been set, it's up to us to follow them or not through Aquinian Free Will.
Nikola @ 116:
Agnostics are actually the most honest. They very truthfully admit that their might be a god...there might not be a god. Atheists and theists are both egotistical and extremists in that they refuse to accept another alternative, yet their own beliefs cannot be supported by facts.
someguy @ 115:
In conversations of the sort we are having, there is a distinction between theism and deism. While people often use the terms interchangeably, the distinction should be recognized when discussing different kinds of beliefs. Many of the U.S. founders professed deism as distinct from theism.
Jefferson unashamedly professed his doubts about the existence of god, and encouraged others to do the same. Many of his contemporaries regarded him as an atheist, though he was not an outright atheist.
Einstein openly wrote that he was misunderstood when he used the term "god," noting unambiguously that he did not believe in a personal god at all.
someguy @ 119:
Sorry, I didn't mean to quote you. I meant "atheist of poetic disposition".
thespork @ 120:
Non-believers in the U.S. have long been the target of such condescension. We are told constantly that we have no place in government, that we are amoral and the cause of the world's woes.
When we speak up, suddenly we're the aggressive, condescending bigots.
I do not begrudge you your faith. I support your right to it, and respect your equal rights as a fellow human being. I will fight for freedom of religion to the death. But I do not have to respect your beliefs in and of themselves.
103 ysbaddaden
Ah, St. Augustine. His virulent anti-sexual mindset irrevocably painted anything sexual as sinful in Western thought, but DAMN he was a great philosopher. There's one quote of his that has always stuck with me:
"...Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion." -Augustine of Hippo
Yeah, the Cathars were trying to transcend the world of matter, and so discouraged marriage and childbirth; informal sexual relationships were permitted for credentes.
LOL
101 Meditating Upside-Down
Now that I think of it, Robert Graves told a similar story of serepents and a toddler Herakles. Hera sent in snakes to kill him in his crib, and his mother and her husband awoke to hearing Ephikles (Herakles twin, but purely human) screaming in terror. They rush to the nursery seeing young Herakles strangling two snakes.
In art, he's shown holding them up by their neck their tongues out near his ears. Graves suggested there was an earlier version where the snakes licked Herakles's ears thus preparing them for wisdom. He based this on earlier beliefs.
124 Karen
The removed/uninvolved god is non-personal (maybe even non-human in form.) That's not unusual at all in Eastern religions.
I don't think I have enough time to watch Futurama now.
So do I watch Robert Livinstone in the Lone Ranger, or some porn?
Kara @ 123:
If your terms are simply that an agnostic is unsure whether there is a god, and an atheist is certain that there is, you're correct.
I used to subscribe to such a framework, but I have grown to find it inadequate.
After all, when it comes to the existence of unicorns, Bigfoot, magic powers, or the celestial teapot, I am ultimately skeptical and always admit that I could be wrong. In all practicality, however, I am a atheist with respect to unicorns and bigfoot, not agnostic about their existence.
It comes down to evidence and probabilities. I do not see evidence for the existence of unicorns. The probability of their existing is very low. Thus, I do not believe in them. I do not say that I just don't know one way or the other. Same with god. I'm an atheist with respect to god's existence, not agnostic. This does not mean I am positive there is no god. Just that I do not believe in god.
ysbaddaden @ 129:
True.
8 Paul Says: “No free man needs a god.” - Nabokov
Wasn't that the guy who wrote Lolita?
I believe in talking snakes. Two of em. Bush and Cheney. Scores of em if you count the televangelists.
The final straw for me which sealed the "There is no God" question was the Catholic priest crimes. The first straw was TV preachers that my folks made me watch in the 70's. They've gotten slicker than Orel Roberts, starting with Robert Schuller, but current religious hosts like Rick Warren are still just in it for power and money. Initially I thought Schuller was a breath of fresh air, but I slowly noticed how strange it was that all of his guests had books to pitch. I then realized that the show was really a talk show, and wondered if he got a fee from his guests for the air time.
Kara @ 123:
I have a friend who's not even 30 and an associate Prof at a UC who has a similar opinion.
He finds agnostism to be the most scientific but doesn't mind if people hope God exists.
Karen @131
My point is that I do not think that agnostics are cowards. I am an agnostic, and I am in no possible way a coward. I simply have no evidence to ignite a firm belief in either the existence/non-existence of a god. Once presented to me...I will make be able to make an informed decision. Doubtful this will happen in my lifetime!
Karen @ 124:
What religious reason would an atheist have for wanting a Church built in his area?
someguy @ 138:
Multipurpose room?
Brad @ 139:
religious reason
Amen Bill, my brother, amen.
someguy @ 138:
As I said, Jefferson was not an atheist. He very much believed in the freedom of religion, and did encourage people of different religions to live and work together in peace.
As a hypothetical, though, as an atheist myself, while I would not want to participate in church activities, I can think of reasons I would desire a place for people of a religious disposition to have a place to practice their religion in my community. If, for instance, they felt they were largely oppressed by prevailing attitudes towards them, I just might fight for them to own a piece of property to gather an worship as they please.
someguy @ 140:
An atheist can have these, you're telling me?
ysbaddaden @ 87:
The Staff of Asclepius has a single serpent and predated the twin serpent staff of Hermes. The single serpent staff also appears on a Sumerian vase of c. 2000 B.C. representing the healing god Ningishita, the prototype of the Greek Asklepios.
I guess you would have to ask them that. I chose that nom de plume because it sounds tough.
Kara @ 137:
Certainly, I do not believe that agnostics are cowards. I spent a long time as an agnostic myself. My point was that atheists are not extremists, dogmatically sure of their position.
If I may, though, do you believe that the existence of god is a 50/50 thing? That is, it is just as probable for god to exist as it is for god not to exist?
In addition, as to the existence of Bigfoot, which statement do you think describes your state of mind best?: "I am positive Bigfoot does not exist." / "I do not believe Bigfoot exists." / "I am really not sure one way or another whether Bigfoot exists, and can't say anything either way." / "I believe Bigfoot exists."
Karen @ 142:
Jefferson also made it clear in the same letter that he identified himself as a member of that denomination.
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