So if the easy to eat banana is supposed to prove the existence of God, what exactly does the artichoke prove?
Update: There is some suggestion in the comments that this is a joke. But it’s real. The guy in the video is Ray Comfort, a New Zealand-born minister and evangelist. It came from his Christian talk show.
For Kindle and with free ePub version. Only $9.49 Great reading.
Here is what Gary Shapiro CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) said: Dvorak's writing sings with insight and clarity. Whether or not you agree with John's views, he will get you thinking and is never boring. These essays are worth the read!
Subscribe to Main Blog feed here:
Subscribe to Comments too (below):
Bad Behavior has blocked 11583 access attempts in the last 7 days.
so does this mean that god meant for people to masturbate? its fits almost as well in my hand as a banana
But it’s real.
I’m astonished, being certain that it was a deadpan parody.
How can anyone with any modicum of intelligence, living in the 21stC, spout such rubbish and actually mean it?
“How can anyone with any modicum of intelligence, living in the 21stC, spout such rubbish and actually mean it?”
The technical term for that debilitating condition is Christianity.
#62 Stereotyping and prejudice is something they taught against when I was in school.
#62 Stereotyping and prejudice is something they taught against when I was in school.
also, a better description of Christianity (regardless of how many ‘christians’ might be) is found in the book, at James 1:27 Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
I’m not interested in debating about how and why some do or don’t do this, I just want to make a distinction between ‘Christians,’ Christianity, and Christ. Never confuse them.
#63 “Stereotyping and prejudice is something they taught against when I was in school.”
I was taught to appreciate a joke, even those that are slightly hyperbolic.
#32 eat a dic… um a bananna I mean
#59
I heard someone recently counted the number of killed/murdered/slaughtered people initiated/demanded and/or approved by the christian god to be more than two million. (In the older part of the bible.)
I’m pretty sure they would have gotten rid of it long time ago if it wasn’t for the fact that the tales of Jesus depends on it.
Of course, this doesn’t make christians terrible. But not any better either.
Personally, I think accepting those hideous crimes as god’s “work” is rather alarming.
When people spout nonsense about natural science, they’re not acting as “Christians” or “Moslems” or “Athiests”, but as arrogant idiots. Or subnormal scientists, if you prefer.
I can’t read music or play an instrument. I made a short movie where I sang and accompanied public domain tunes and even composed one. Should I ever post it to YouTube or whatever, and somebody links to it here, I’ll have nobody to blame but myself. Somebody might attack me as a musically-challenged chess player. Then will other chess players start complaining? No, because chess players don’t go around making music AS chess players. They might, like Ray Charles, just happen to be chess players. The trouble is that certain Christians, AS Christians, are making pronouncements about science and are trying to influence public policy, which is a legit topic of this forum. So, if the price of science is eternal vigilance, we’re going to keep seeing postings like this. Maybe the part of the Christian community that does not support bad science should find a new name for themselves, or insist that the other guys get a new name. The f word (fundamentalist) used to be an easy one to throw around, but it’s one thing to believe bad science yourself, quite another to force it on impressionable minds.
And getting on that other topic of JCD (that’s not JCxD = 500 Christs) and tech issues, in the latest PC Mag which has reached this remote spiral arm of the galaxy, he talks about how braindead Windows is about multitasking. Here’s another example: insert a disc into your CD / DVD unit, count how many programs stop responding, and how long it takes for them to come back from the dead. Oops, sorry, maybe resurrection is OT.
#67
Shhh… he might unplug his Internet connection in order to punish John for having this Web site… 😉
I totally stand with Ray Comfort and his claim. His point was that God (not a “random” cause) allowed for creation to be protected after man thought he could be like God.
In all truth, I understand that there is somewhat of a conceitedness that comes from what this world says is “smart” — i.e. working with technology. I’ve been there myself, too. However, I’ve seen in my own life, and in other’s lives total and utter helplessness when the truths of life as we know it today (tragedy, hurt, etc) pop our little bubble when these totally temporary finds fail our security.
I also know that unless you see it for yourself — through selling out and seeking the truth — you just won’t get it, and it all will seem the stupidest thing there has ever been; the Bible itself says so, quite frankly. I’ve seen Christ’s work, I’ve seen the reality of him and his claims, and I’ve seen things that result from a relationship with him that go way (read: way) beyond coincidence. Put parts of that claim in italics all you want, it will come from my mouth until I die; God-willing.
As far as tragedies…I’ve been through them myself, so I’m qualified to speak on them. I haven’t died (duh), but I’ve been in the face of death before. And after the experience, I sold out and realized that because he’s God, it’s his choice, and it’s always right — and I’m not worth anything, but he loves mankind so, that he died for us. When do you draw closest to your loved ones? It’s in tragedy. We’re just so stupid that we won’t draw close to him unless we need a Dad to comfort us a lot of times.
WokTiny – you’re spot on, main.
John, thanks for the opportunity to have open discourse. It really is greatly appreciated. And thank you others for the same.
#58 – The fact you can’t tell I’m messing with this guy is sad.
#71
Eh, I thank you for the support for the nose/glasses theory then 😉
And…….. you’re welcome………..
Atheists (mostly) had fun with this clip because it again illustrates theists’ own projection of grasping desperately at anything that might confirm their superstition and ultimate fear of death. Shawn exhibits the same weakness… an inability to cope with reality. So that fear is replaced with a big brother who will magically take care of things.
Hey, if it works for you Shawn, that is fine with me. Just keep it to yourself and let my reality continue without you trying to bestow your “Revelation” and the intolerant baggage that often goes with it, on me or like minded, and I’ll be happy to accept your condition and not ridicule it.
#68 Roger, I won’t question the numbers involved, but the gruesome nature of some of the Bible’s war stories really hits home when you realize that women and children were often either slaughtered right along with the men (if they couldn’t flee fast enough or refused), or taken as slaves.
I think many youngsters would have fewer nightmares after seeing a Friday The 13th movie marathon than after reading stories from the Bible about the deity that Mommy and Daddy worship, a deity that sometimes kills children in their sleep as a means of hurting the adults who love them.
#70 Jägermeister “…punish John for having this Web site”
Didn’t you know? We’re John’s punishment — he needs no other 😉
#75
The numbers are in:
At least 2 017 956 people accounted for as ordered killed by the god of the bible. Not counting 65 entire cities where the people were slain, but no numbers stated for these.
Gory and horrible stuff. And nothing much reminding of mercy and love.
Now you know what the banana maker had as a hobby….
I’m not certain that John wants this to turn into a strictly faith-based discussion. I had a big post written out, but I’ll scale down here, ha ha…
JimR – The clip isn’t a desperate grasp; it’s a common philosophical tool that wipes the dust of ordinary off everyday things and presents them as they are: logical works of God.
As for the weakness comment – I have seen a considerable greater weakness in those that place their faith in things such as technology and other temp stuff. When those things fall, it’s readily apparent that they fall, because they just fall apart. If they didn’t, I hardly find it admirable that they would be secure; they themselves they have no idea what is going to happen next…why not search it out?
As for my inability to cope with reality: I’m sorry, but my claims were validated, not issued, when I saw that Christ was real; that’s a big and fundamental difference. “Working for me”…reality isn’t relative. If Christ is real, then his claims are blanket claims. Same with opposing claims to the degree that they are made. If he *is* real, then what he said is also real. And I can’t ignore those facts. My purpose isn’t defined by a bubble of popular opinion.
As for the killings, there were logical and just reasons for what God chose and chooses to do. Always is. Fact of the matter – Christ didn’t command those who didn’t trust in him to be slaughtered, so save the comparison to Islam. When he did command those things, remember that even if you don’t accept what the book says as truth, the story is that those are the same people that he died for on a cross. Keep the logic there. Also, I wonder if the same passion or fervor would be there to oppose the slaughtering of the smallest of all in a mother’s womb, or smaller still, a dish.
I *am* thankful because these are important discussions. Especially in these times, and because it certainly is at the heart of the world around us, tech-assisted or not. Thanks guys and gals.
#76 we’ve killed plenty more in our wars, what’s your point? are you saying that only evil takes life? if you jumped off a building, would you curse gravity for making you fall? There is a certain way about the universe, reality, rhythm. being in harmony with such rhythms and realities makes life better*, being out of harmony, not so much better. I don’t know what God is, but I don’t limit myself to the notion that he is an old gray man sitting in the clouds, but perhaps something more, different, than we can understand.
*better is not always easier, site 1st century roman rule, but see this illustration:
Acts 2: 42They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. 44All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need.
Everyone had their needs met. All this talk about bananas and killings is not the point. I think the power of Christ and the will of God is displayed very clearly here, in that everyone had their needs met.
#77 Shawn says “As for the killings, there were logical and just reasons for what God chose and chooses to do. Always is.”
That’s where my conscience tells me otherwise, and your argument of “just reasons” shows to what extent you’ve turned off your own conscience. According to the Bible, when Yahweh was trying to convince the Pharoah to let the Israelites leave Egypt, his final “plague” was when he reached his hand of death into cribs and beds all across Egypt, and he killed the firstborn son of each Egyptian household in their sleep. As a mafioso might say, God “wacked them.” It’s interesting to note that he only killed the children as a means of hurting and coercing the adults who loved them. The children’s only crime was being Egyptian.
When I was a kid in church, I grew up singing this song (among other silly ditties)…
Jesus loves the little children,
All the children of the world.
Red and yellow, black and white,
They are precious in his sight
Jesus loves the little children of the world.
I guess God the Father and Jesus disagree on this issue where Egyptian children are concerned, as long as God has an important point to make to the ruling Pharoah. Shawn, it’s time to turn your conscience back on, and stop recognizing Yahweh as an authority so “right” that he’s somehow justified even when he kills innocent children. If someone kills your child, will you ask first if they have a logical and just reason for doing so? Wake up and smell the brutality of the demon Yahweh. Find yourself a real god who can make his point without killing innocent children in their sleep.
This is just another example of how incompetant religous nuts are. This guy has no fruit of knowledge for the subject of science. Yet he has imaginably created a science of his own for his definement of the bananna. C’mon man, atleast do your research on banannas before you go off and use it as your evidence.
If there is a God. I can just wonder how much of a kick he and his buddies must get out of watching this.
#50 You can make anyone from any theological standpoint look like an idiot if you want to.
True. It isn’t even a challenge to do so.
But, enough already. Evolution is a theory – not a fact
Comment by me — 11/9/2006 @ 10:13 am
Especially when the opposition doesn’t know what a theory is.
#79 you assume that one cannot kill what they Love. the kind of logic a child uses when he thinks “daddy can’t love me, he spanked me, and that’s not love”
lol WokTiny, just when I was getting bummed out because the discussion had lost some of its insanity, your explanation gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “love ’em to death.” You’ve completely restored my faith in your religion 😉
JoJo #80 – I realize all well what science is — science is, at it’s core, allowing no presuppositions to enter into a judgment of what is fact — based solely on what can be tested. That’s science in a sentence. No less and no more (please do correct me if I’m wrong.) I will say that evolution answers a lot of questions. Scientific theory aims to do this in general by “evolving” itself iteration by iteration (OhForTheLoveof #81) but if the answers are weaved together well enough, anything that fills in the gaps within some semblance of likelihood can be used to do so, and thus, the whole thing can be one big woven lie. That’s a fact, in this unintended paradoxical phrase.
Gary #79 – I understand your passion in saying such a thing. Let me pose this to you, because of your reasoning: are you a staunch pro-life voter because of this love for the defense of children? I cannot assume either way in this text, but I do want to respectfully pose that important question. As for God’s right to do so…He’s God. He’s the creator, and he’s the destroyer if he so chooses. He *could* squash us all like bugs (if we all agree on the proposition that he is all-powerful, which is reasonable to agree on for the sake of argument). Let me pose this question: If you were God, the all-powerful creator of humanity; had a creation of people (who amounted to bugs in comparison to your might) who saw your power (through the plagues) and they *still* chose to deny your existence…would *you* go through hell (literally) and die for them?
With those positions established, let’s please recall that the Egyptians were not acting in tolerance and peace. The nation itself was not an innocent bystander who were minding their own business, and treating everyone well. No, they were the heart of intolerance which you seem to be speaking against so passionately, with an entire race of people as unwilling slaves. That must be added to this discussion as well. Not only that, but the plagues themselves were — every single one of them — able to be avoided by releasing the race of people that they were enslaving. Time and time again, extraordinary signs were shown to prove the desire of the Almighty. Even the killing of the firstborn, the one that broke the backs of the Egyptians, could have been avoided This stance differs greatly from your comments, Gary. After all, please recall that the same scriptures that you are discrediting say that God “desires that no one shall perish”.
Now, the keystone argument in all of this — if there is no God, then why should one then fighting for lives that have no meaning? It is by definition self-righteous to do so — one ascribes that there is no God, or no reasonable way to come to the knowledge of the higher power and the desires of his heart. If so, one are becomes (no typo, there) one’s own God — by definition, again — when you fight for something that you are assigning ultimate reason and/or justification, when you claim that there is no way of knowing the ultimate reason/justification in the first place.
And if that cannot be answered, then one is (sorry for using this term again!), by definition, in the same place that you claim Ray Comfort is — claiming a faith based upon no reason to do so.
Thank you fellas, and fellias, if are any here. This stuff is the purpose of life, for sure.
Shawn, your entire post tries to reinforce one of the recurring themes of the Bible and one of Yahweh’s greatest character flaws, that is, the punishment of the many (often innocent) for the sins of the few. According to the Bible, every household throughout Egypt with a male child felt God’s wrath that night, yet the notion that all of those whose child was killed truly deserved it is ludicrous on its face. That kind of wholesale guilt defies both logic and human experience, and in any case, none of what you described rises to a level that warrants a death sentence on a young child.
You seem to think that closer examination of certain details or even gross generalizations about the Egyptians will somehow lead to some measure of justification for killing their children. And my views on abortion are also irrelevant in this discussion, since neither position would seriously undermine arguments against the slaughter of living, breathing children, something you’re still trying to rationalize. If you think I don’t cast my protective net wide enough, does that make child murder at all ages suddenly tolerable? On the other hand, your position on abortion certainly could undermine your argument that God’s slaughter of children wasn’t evil. It should be considered evil, by your own standards.
The bottom line in all of this remains unchanged — God (the demon Yahweh) killed thousands of innocent children in their sleep as a means of hurting the parents who loved them, to put further pressure on Pharoah to let the Israelites leave Egypt. If you’re somehow sincere in your attempt to broaden our discussion into extraneous material, let me just point out that you’re losing sight of the forest for all the many trees. But if you’re not sincere, then it’s an attempt at misdirection unworthy of even a second-rate carnival magician.
In the end, Shawn, your best argument was “He’s the creator, and he’s the destroyer if he so chooses.” That’s your best argument, because it’s also your most religious argument, and it takes religion and all the pathology that goes with it to justify this act of utter contempt for young Egyptian lives. As for me, perhaps I’ll know my creator when I find a god that doesn’t offend and contradict my conscience at every turn. So far, I’ve only ruled out Yahweh and a handful of others, but I’m certainly open to the idea of a god that represents true goodness.
#77
“As for the killings, there were logical and just reasons for what God chose and chooses to do. Always is. Fact of the matter – Christ didn’t command those who didn’t trust in him to be slaughtered, so save the comparison to Islam.”
I don’t know what it is that makes horrible behavior acceptable as long as it is long time ago, and/or it is god’s work.
“Documented” genocide is nothing but genocide, no matter how you look at it. The quote makes me both scared and sad. Scared because obviously, life taken in the name of god, is “logical and just”. Sad because realizing this, really makes me feel the same about christianity as I feel about the form of islam some terror group in the Middle East tend to justify their horrible acts with.
I wonder why the christians so faithfully support the disgusting acts of their god? Slaughtering millions of innocent people, keeping slaves, even including instructions how to mark them as slaves. Stoning of people with certain qualities that the god doesn’t approve. Hm, and what about the city where they were instructed to kill everybody but the virgins? Turned out to be 30 000 virgins. Must have been quite a large city. And what the hell is it with virgins anyway? I wouldn’t call them sex slaves, would you? Or maybe they were turned into history’s first nuns? “Untouched and pure” till they died?
As a matter of fact, I see very clear similarities between militant Islam, and the cruel god described in the bible. So I am taking you on your word and am saving this comparison as a valid equation. The two religions are in fact very similar in my view.
I don’t know if this
“..Fact of the matter – Christ didn’t command those who didn’t trust in him to be slaughtered,….”
were written by the help of your god? Maybe he guided you a little? I think you should believe so, right? After all, he’s almighty. Anyway, as I read the sentence, it equals: “Fact of the matter – Christ did command those who trust in him to be slaughtered,”.
So I say: Holy shit, he didn’t even spare those who trusted him?
It’s sad that so many people’s view of the Earth are formed by scriptures with so many bad and terrible qualities as the bible has. There are good parts there also, by all means, but that does not justify all the terrible stuff. And to put blind faith in that book does not help to save this fragile planet we live on at all. On the contrary.
Lastly, I do feel totally alienated to your faith. And that’s probably why I feel so appalled hearing you justify the genocides.
So, for a moment, imagine you have a sister who have just joined this “other” religion. And she says”We had to kill a couple of million Canadians, ’cause they didn’t approve our god. But I’m OK with that, ’cause it was what our god commanded.” I bet you would start getting worried for her. I know I do. For you.
(Please, I love Canada, Canadians, and all that goes with it. Except for the occasional cold and snow they ship this way) 🙂
Roger, I always want to avoid name-calling in these arguments, but the level of insanity it takes to justify killing children in response to oppression just about makes my head explode sometimes. I’m just afraid that if this sort of dysfunction exists elsewhere, seemingly ordinary people might even be able to rationalize acts of violence like flying planes into buildings as retaliation for their own perceived oppression and injustice.
Naw — things like that are just too far-fetched 😉
Enough drool about bananas and religion. I prefer a large juicy sour pickle anytime. Thank you, God!
monkeys eat bannanas… we evolved from monkey..s….
END OF STORY U RETARD U PROOVED URSELF WRONG