If you haven’t been watching this show, you’re missing out big time. The writing’s crisp, the characters are interesting (even if they are incredibly self-involved), and well….the show itself is drop dead funny. Here’s a few of clips:
Kenny, of course, is utterly funny:
Enjoy.
As of yesterday, I called out a religious person on his view on atheistic morality. Sadly, it’s as I’ve stated prior: the claim doesn’t withstand actual scrutiny. But wait! His response is as follows:
And, for the atheist, what, after that? Nothing. No consciousness, no nothing. No seeing what has happened to your descendants. No caring about anything. No existence. Nothing. Zero. Zilch. Zip. Nada. In an atheistic universe, the dead cannot care. Therefore, any caring they may do must be done in this life, the only life they have.
Newsflash: Yep, the dead don’t care. Yes, the caring needs to be done in the here and now, seeing as there’s no afterlife.
And why might they care? About anything? To whom do their lives matter? And for how long? Does the cold, atheistic universe into which they arrived by complete accident care? Does that same universe have a purpose for them? The very thought provokes laughter. Even if someone misses them once they're gone, that will matter for less than a hundred years, too, probably less than fifty, since those people will die and not care about anything, either. And eventually, their country will pass away, then the planet, then everything, and none of it will have mattered, none of it at all. Their morality, such as it is, will have served no purpose other than to perpetuate the species before the planet is scorched when the sun turns red, and that, for no reason at all, it simply being what happened by sheer accident.
I’m not too crazy about an uncaring universe either, to be honest. That weird evolutionary mechanism makes me care about me a little too much for comfort, and it makes us all way too introverted. But the fact remains, that the religious have this incredible hubris about existence. They think the whole of reality was put here as a tribute to their own existence, and Dog forbid you should take that special fuzzy wuzzy feeling from them – because as miserably as we are designed, we not only think the universe revolves around us, but that anything that makes us happy is to be defended to the death against the ravages of reality.
Atheists have a limited, very limited window of opportunity, a very short time in which to enjoy the accidentally-animated sack of protoplasm they walk around in, and absolutely no reason whatever not to do whatever they please, as long as they can get away with it.
As opposed to a Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card that any serial killer, child molester, or any other slavering sub-human can employ at the last minute? “Oh, I feel genuine remorse, lemmee in heaven!” One might note that atheists tend to be better behaved than the religious lot, regardless of the old tired canard “Just seek sybaritic pleasure!” As if somehow, those of us not invested or entrenched enough in the supernatural seem to find less value in others. No, actual reality shows us that we obviously imbue others with more intrinsic value, not less.
And what do they choose to do with that limited period of time? An astonishing number seem to have arrived at the absurd conclusion that the best, most enjoyable (apparently) use of their limited time is to try convincing theists that they're wrong. That's right: their mission in life seems to have become convincing people about whom they will shortly cease to care, people who will, in turn, shortly cease to care about anything themselves, that there is no God.
Well, it is a fun diversion, but it’s hardly something I lose sleep over, or wrestle with regularly. I am more concerned that there are Dominionists who want to turn the USA into UST (the United States of Theocracy), and that End-Timers are trying to jumpstart what they view as Armageddon because of their book of fables (that’s all three ‘people of the book’ not just Christians), the religious are trying to tell adults what adults they can and cannot marry, and the intrusion of non-science into our already beleaguered and financially strapped public schools. So, no, I’ve got no problem with people and their fantasies. I’d be more than happy to leave them to their own devices. But the actual enforcement of their religious beliefs in my life? Yeah, I don’t think so. Time to be vocal. Time to let them know they can’t just shove their way to the front of the line for consideration.
Good luck with that one, atheists. Last time I checked, though they disagreed on much about God, you have a couple of billion people, at least, to convince of His non-existence. And for what? So that they will have--you think--better lives in the short period of time remaining to them on this miserable mudball? In the most literal sense possible, why care? It will matter to any particular individual for a maximum of 115 years, and then--poof.
“If a million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.” – Anatole France. Really? An argument from numbers? How numb. Because the here and now do matter, and despite the void that swallows us all, I was constructed (no, not designed in the religious sense, it’s obvious to anyone with a critical eye that we’re very poorly put together) to give a flying damn about others in my species.
And that’s not a bad thing. That there’s no afterlife? Why should the lack of such a thing make me any less of a decent person? The answer is no…it doesn’t.
Cross posted @ God Is 4 Suckers!
"Nothing is rarer among moralists and saints than integrity; perhaps they say the opposite, perhaps they even believe it. For when faith is more useful, effective, convincing than conscious hypocrisy, hypocrisy instinctively and forthwith becomes innocent. . ."- Nietzsche.
One of the more irritating of aspects of cutting the Gordian Knot of religious belief, is that atheists get bombarded with all sorts of sophistic noise. As if the divorce from the supernatural entails a complete atavism, and a materialistic viewpoint reduces one to become nothing more than a dribbling reduction of nerve-endings.
Case in point: this fellow regurgitates that hoariest of old chestnuts, the ‘borrowed morality’ which he loosely bases on this specific bit of rubbish - and really, there’s all sorts of wrong on multiple levels. Let’s itemize:
A. Christianity doesn’t have exclusive ‘rights’ to morality. Morality developed independently of it thousands of years a priori. In fact, if we were to explore that simile, it would be that that particular belief system ‘borrowed’ copiously from various sources. One need only scan historical events to see that this brand of religion took an incredibly long time to develop anything vaguely resembling morals in the first place.
B. You can’t ‘borrow’ morals (which is why I use sarcastic quotes) – these set of rules are learned, primarily from the environment and interaction with other human beings. You can’t ‘return’ morals, they aren’t some kind of coin one can charge interest on in lieu of the ‘loan’. And in the case of definition number 2, which states 2.a = ‘to appropriate for one’s own use” and 2.b “Derive; adopt” – it’s what humans do. Either way, this is some sort of reification. You can’t store up a metaphysical abstract. Shoring up “moral capital” is the mistake of a philosophical amateur.
C. This is one of those weak efforts to defenestrate the opposition: “You can’t use our rules to criticize our system – they’re OUR rules, you can’t have ‘em!”
D. I call contextomy. In the link provided above, it quotes Nietzsche as saying:
When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one’s feet. This morality is by no means self-evident: this point has to be exhibited again and again, despite the English flatheads. Christianity is a system, a whole view of things thought out together. By breaking one main concept out of it, the faith in God, one breaks the whole: nothing necessary remains in one’s hands. Christianity presupposes that man does not know, cannot know, what is good for him, what evil: he believes in God, who alone knows it. Christian morality is a command; its origin is transcendent; it is beyond all criticism, all right to criticism; it has truth only if God has truth—it stands or falls with faith in God.
Which appears to be quite damning. However, if you read it in its entirety you find that Nietzsche is first quoting G. Eliot:
G. Eliot. — They are rid of the Christian God and now believe all the more firmly that they must cling to Christian morality. That is an English consistency; we do not wish to hold it against little moralistic females à la Eliot. In England one must rehabilitate oneself after every little emancipation from theology by showing in a veritably awe-inspiring manner what a moral fanatic one is. That is the penance they pay there.
So with the inserted forward, it changes this entire paragraph’s meaning.
When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one's feet. This morality is by no means self-evident: this point has to be exhibited again and again, despite the English flatheads. Christianity is a system, a whole view of things thought out together. By breaking one main concept out of it, the faith in God, one breaks the whole: nothing necessary remains in one's hands. Christianity presupposes that man does not know, cannot know, what is good for him, what evil: he believes in God, who alone knows it. Christian morality is a command; its origin is transcendent; it is beyond all criticism, all right to criticism; it has truth only if God is the truth — it stands and falls with faith in God.
And with the following, the entire paragraph is obviously a criticism of England and the handling of materialism by the English philosophers, not a sweeping incrimination of atheist morality at all:
When the English actually believe that they know "intuitively" what is good and evil, when they therefore suppose that they no longer require Christianity as the guarantee of morality, we merely witness the effects of the dominion of the Christian value judgment and an expression of the strength and depth of this dominion: such that the origin of English morality has been forgotten, such that the very conditional character of its right to existence is no longer felt. For the English, morality is not yet a problem.
A gentle reminder for those of you who haven’t been keeping up: Nietzsche was German. If you read the numbered sequences of SKIRMISHES OF AN UNTIMELY MAN in the link provided, you’ll find numbered criticisms of George Sand, Renan, etc.
E. This is a strawman caricature employing a broad generalization and simplistic reductionism. The strawman (which I’ve exposed as such) relies on reducing Nietzsche’s complex philosophical outlook to something quite simple, and then applying it across the entire spectrum of atheistic thought. We are not all moral relativists, there’s metaphysical materialism, atheistic existentialism, non-reductionist materialism, materialistic determinism – the isms go on almost interminably.
F. In the link that started it all, the other author resorts to the childish tactic of simulation what he might think Freddy’s attitude towards Richard Dawkins might be, by providing a non-quote.
So, in a nutshell: since this nonsense isn’t representative of good old Freddy at all, and Freddy wasn’t even representing atheists in toto, both of these philosophical puff pieces have no intellectual legs whatsoever.
So…the old Shakespeare quote “Neither a lender nor a borrower be” applies here – atheism is still a simple matter of non-belief, and morals are a communal value, not a capitalist value to be collected on.
Till the next post, then.
And no, there’s no punch line here. The fact is, that Jefferson edited a specific book, cutting out the entire (bulky) first half, and selectively edited the second half.
Hitler took that same book, and censored all references to Jews.
And now Conservapædia has decided to ‘eliminate all liberal bias’ (christlation: “Make it say what we want it to say.”).
All this hullaballoo over a work of fiction?
As an avid Tai Chi practitioner, I run into a lot of misconceptions and confusion. Hope this helps.
I’ve been directed to parks by people who say, “Yeah, there are Tai Chi players there,” but when I arrive, all the folks there are doing Qigong. So let’s dispel a few misconceptions, and some myths while we’re at it.
1. Tai Chi is a form of qigong, but is also separate.
2. Tai Chi is a martial art – if you see elderly Chinese people walking slowly, or standing still for long amounts of time, it’s likely Qigong. If they’re just waving their arms about – probably the latter. If it looks like they’re doing a martial art move in slo-mo – probably Tai Chi.
3. Not every Chinese person is good at Tai Chi, so you probably shouldn’t make a snap judgment as to whether or not it’s any damn good.
Number 3 is an understandable one. I’ve been playing in plenty of parks, and some ancient Asian will come up, and start doing a Tai Chi form. Currently I see this little old man where I practice. He’s…well, he’s bloody awful is what. It looks more like some sorry calisthenics than Tai Chi.
Conversely, I was practicing in a park in Fremont a few years back, and this pretty Chinese gal came over when I finished, and chatted me up. She told me, “I just moved here from Beijing a few months ago, and you’re better than the old men I saw in the parks over there.”
Funny story: so this happens a lot. Elderly Chinese folk come up to me after practice, and begin to talk to me in Mandarin. I usually tell them (in Mandarin) that my Chinese is terrible. They figure, ‘Hey, look at this guy! He’s gotta speak the lingo!” So usually I hear a string of words + sentences, and I shrug and smile.
Cross posted @ God is 4 suckers!
Avoiding this is like avoiding a plague
We can't understand the advances we made
We've tried to resist but it's so hard to say no
We're pretending to see what the future will hold
We appear to be in control of our fate – OMD, Pretending To See The Future
Of all the hocus pocus, voodoo, and superstitious tripe, the occult hucksters that thrive from the grief and need of the bereaved are perhaps among the most wretched. They are the ambulance chasers, the vultures who turn a dollar from the pain of others, and hide behind the anachronisms of yesteryear, rather than work an actual job.
I speak of ghouls like Alison Dubois, who, despite her claims of aiding police investigations, has failed miserably. Sylvia Browne (featured in the video provided) who has proven time and again that she is indisputably a lying crock of shit. Oh, and she bailed on the JREF million dollar challenge (she claims she doesn’t need the money, but charges 700 USD for 20 minutes on a phone – wow!). And that incredible douche, John Edwards.
And despite the continuous claim on TV and movies that psychics provide police with powerfully incriminating evidence that helps capture killers and rapists, well, that too is a lie.
But none of these frauds are ever held accountable for their nonsense. We can sue tire companies, doctors, dentists, for shoddy merchandise or breach of promise or malpractice, but these sleazebags hide behind labels such as ‘for entertainment purposes only’, suckling at the lifeblood of the gullible like some cheap monster in a B-grade movie, except that they look like normal folks. And of course, this is one of the many side-effects of our culture’s constant enabling of religious beliefs, that indulgent horseshit of ‘truth is subjective and different for everyone’, the warm fuzzy-wuzzy feeling of woo that those lacking in any critical thinking skills hold close to their heart, and spit fire at anyone who tries to use reason and rationality to disabuse them of their cherished illusions.
One fellow actually sued a New Jersey psychic for the $250,000 she bilked from him. What a grand idea. It is unfortunate that the victims of these vultures can’t just do a blanket class-action suit naming a list of these unconscionable pricks as defendants, and bankrupt the lot of them.
It’s a sorry, sorry state of affairs when the frauds hide under the umbrella of belief without repercussions.
Till the next post, then.
