Weekly Trashing: “Hey Asshole, I didn’t say that.” -GOD
If you go anywhere rural… they are totally into God. I guess it’s because they have nothing better to do than feel guilty about the few minor pleasures they take in their little lives. Or maybe it’s because they are so fucking bored with there being nothing better to do than get drunk that they hope beyond reason that after you die you go somewhere that all of the attractive single women didn’t get the fuck out of after High School.
In the Inland California suburban wasteland of Rancho Cucamonga, where people love that their city sounds like a Bob Hope punchlin, pro-religious billboards are everywhere because, you guessed it, there is nothing better to do in the Inland Empire. So when a billboard saying, “Imagine No Religion” is put up by the Wisconsin group the Freedom from Religion Foundation over 90 Complaints from scared little sheep started bleeting in to their city government (as if they have anything to do with anything!) and the city asked the sign company if their was a way to have the billboard removed. Eventually it was taken down and a refund was issued to the FFRF.
But now legal action against the city of Rancho I’dKillMyselfIfIHadToLiveThere has been taken by the Freedom From Religion Foundation citing that they are infringing upon the organizations Freedom of Speech, and in my opinion rightly so. The city is now backpedaling with the claim that they didn’t demand to have it removed but just were just respecting the concerns of the citizens. Well what about the freethinkers, athiests and skeptics that share the living hell of the desert with them? Surely they weren’t complaining!
via KTLA.com:
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is suing the city because it says Redevelopment Director Linda Daniels, who is also named in the suit, contacted the billboard company telling it of the numerous complaints the city had received regarding the billboard and asked if the company could do anything.
“It does appear that the city was engaging in this officious intervention and has violated our free speech and our establishment clause rights,” said foundation co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “They used their intimidation powers against the billboard company, I believe.”
See we freethinkers have true concern for the law and our freedoms because we are competing with a sad compilation of bedtime stories used for hundreds (and not thousands) of years to control the population through fear. We would prefer instead that our freedoms be based on the idea that this life is all you have and that we should all have the freedom to make ourselves happy in any way we choose as long as it doesn’t harm others. Religion does not do that. It imposes it’s authority on EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING citing that only people of THEIR religion are correct in an assumption on a single group of people that a DIVINE CREATOR chose to make rules for the entire world…even though that creator is responsible for creating EVERYTHING. I guess some are more equal in the eyes of their god than others.
It’s a fucking good thing that the eyes of justice are blind. The more we can do to abandon religion, the more free we will become. I’m gonna rip some shit up at X-mas dinner this year.
Tags: Athiests, Freedom from Religion Foundation, Freethinkers, God billboards, Inland Empire, Justice, Rancho Cucamonga, Skeptics
December 2nd, 2008 at 10:18 pm
If you want to understand why religion, particularly Christianity, is such a powerful theoretical and philosophical thing then you should read Augustine’s City of God.
The book is famous, primarily, for laying out a philosophical logic system that “proves” God must exist and systematically dismantles every point a skeptic tries to make to show that Atheism is not a tenable system of thought.
Augustine pretty much made Christianity what it is today. It’s a good, though incredibly long, read. About 2000 pages, if I remember correctly
December 3rd, 2008 at 12:59 am
Fuck that guy. Even if you could prove there was a God… which you can’t. You can TOTALLY prove the Bible is bullshit by looking at the hundreds of Gods that came before the new and old testament with THE EXACT SAME STORY. The bible would be kicked out of college for plagiarism.
December 3rd, 2008 at 2:18 pm
Of course. Remember T.J., the skeptics that came before and after Christianity argued the same thing you are right now.
Augustine answers those questions in such a way that the Skeptic has no comeback. In other words, Augustine single handedly defeated Skeptic logic thereby inoculating Christianity to every critic it had in the early days (and even today) thus enabling it to become the dominant force.
You just can’t understand Christianity until you’ve read City of God.
December 3rd, 2008 at 3:05 pm
The skeptics that came before christianity are still correct. Most of the religions that came before christianity are dead (save for the jews). What argument did they have?
A skeptic ALWAYS has a comeback because a christian (or any other fairytale) always has, “It’s a matter of faith”. The skeptic comeback will always be, “Prove It”. If the argument is “Well, something had to have started it all” then the answer to that is, as Deejay would say, “Hey, don’t worry about it”. Thats not evidence, thats coincidence. We’ve figured a fuck of a lot out about the universe and it hasn’t been long since we figured out the Heliocentricity. I think in light of Science’s PROVEN evidence I have to lean towards faith in mankind.
Books don’t prove divinity and I don’t want eternity. Look what it’s done to this world! I want anyone who doesn’t live for this world to LEAVE IT. You’re so confident in a hereafter? Go to it. Show me Jesus, show me miracles, show me any evidence of a hereafter, then we’ll talk. But i’m not gonna read some douchebag’s book where he tries to justify any of the NONSENSE that a bunch of twats put into the bible. We might as well worship the sun.
Is it the age of Aquarius yet? Maybe that will bring enlightenment (i.e. Faith in Man kind and an abandonment of outdated theories of Sin and Salvation.) Cause Aries was fucking gay and Pisces has ruined the world.
December 4th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
No, I don’t think you are getting it. “Prove it” is not an adequate comeback for a skeptic. Because Augustin would simply say “I just did, skeptic. Read my fucking book, yo”
The reason a skeptic cannot intellectually say “prove it” as a defense is that, inherently, the skeptic believes there IS NO truth. Cicero, whose writings were the biggest threat to the intellectual and philosophical argument for Christianity and which caused Augustin (who was a pagan before converting to Christianity, by the way) to find a way to prove him wrong, famously summed up the skeptical point of view thus:
The only thing you can know for sure is that you can’t know anything.
This is the tried and true skeptic argument. You do exactly what you just did, T.J., you say “prove it”. If someone can’t prove it, then the skeptic’s argument appears impenetrable. BUT, there is an inherent paradox in the skeptic’s argument.
Remember, the skeptic’s entire philosophy is built upon the notion that nobody can no anything for sure. In other words, there is no Truth, therefore, if there is no Truth, then there cannot be a God. For Augustine, God is Truth, so Augustine is arguing that “Yes skeptic, I can prove to you why there is a Truth and I’m going to use your own argument against you”.
T.J., you seem like a pretty knowledgeable skeptic, using the info I’ve just given you, can you figure out what Augustine’s response is going to be? ;)
December 5th, 2008 at 3:12 am
We skeptics believe in truth through process. Science is real, we see it. We’re tearing things apart, we know how they work. We have a pretty good idea how we got here and in the process everything in the bible except that 1 question has pretty much been solved.
And was it Socrates who said that the Only true knowledge is that you know nothing (and shit).
Is the inherant paradox “well, you’re here aren’t you?”
cop. out.
Or is it the, “Then prove that he doesn’t exist” because it’s theoretical either way. You can’t present someone that doesn’t exist because then they would have to exist to prove them wrong.
My Proof: Brain surgeons at Boston University have enabled a mute man to speak again by implanting an electrode into his brain. The electrode senses when he’s thinking about vowels and reproduces them using a speech synthesizer.
A couple months ago a british man’s severed finger grew back with the aid of magical pig intestine stem cell fairy dust.
We’re figuring it out. I just want to skip to the part where we believe in ourselves and do good because it’s inside of us and not because a book told people to. Because the same book is making people kill. Even if the same book KEEPS people from killing, there are still assholes who “find jesus” after they’ve done bullshit and think that ITS ALL GOOD. And others who use it to get through tough times. Hey, thats great they’ve convinced themselves that something is there, but im sure those are the same people who ignored and fucked off their real friends when they were there for them.
December 5th, 2008 at 8:23 am
And was it Socrates who said that the Only true knowledge is that you know nothing
I think that was Operation Ivy.
December 5th, 2008 at 9:02 pm
No it was Bill and Ted.
December 6th, 2008 at 2:01 am
Oh my, I’m afraid you’ve just lost the argument, T.J. :)
1. The paradox is this: Skeptics DO know something…the KNOW that the only thing you can know is that you can’t know anything. How can a skeptic honestly say they know that? The entire point of skepticism is that there is no truth. Yet they know that you can’t know anything? Doesn’t work, and Augustin pointed that out.
2. If you believe in science,then you aren’t a skeptic. One of the fundamental tenants of skepticism is that nothing is real. Long story short: We engage the world through our senses. Senses can deceive and can be proven over and over again to not be accurate. You can’t trust senses. Seeing is not believing. Even other species “see” the world differently (snakes via infra-red, bats via sonar, for example), who is to say which is the “correct reality”? A true skeptic rejects sensory perception altogether as a falsehood.
So, not only is a skeptic trapped by his own philosophical argument…they actually DO believe in a truth…but following skeptic thought to its logical conclusion means that they must actually reject sensory perception. Augustin essentially says “It’s impossible to be a skeptic because nobody DOES that”. In other words, skepticism is nothing but philosophical masturbation. It leads absolutely nowhere.
For example, I can, using science/mathematics, “prove” that raindrops falling from a cloud and hitting the ground…never actually happens mathematically. It’s easy to show this. BUT, nobody on this planet is going to honestly believe to themselves that when they see a rainstorm that the rain is somehow not hitting the ground.
SO…. I think you’d agree T.J. that rain hits the ground in a downpour. Therefore, you are not a skeptic. Instead, if you believe that it is indeed “true” that this happens even though mathematically it can be shown not to be the case, then you have lost your standing in the argument with Augustin. Because all Augustin has to prove is that there is, indeed, Truth. Once you’ve given him that ground you’ve lost.
Because you’re no longer arguing as a Skeptic. You’re arguing as a Believer. Suddenly, Augustin has you on his side of the field and it becomes a debate of Believer vs. Believer (Christian vs. Science), which is easy enough to win.
In other words T.J., you’re not a Skeptic and science is not even remotely a skeptic’s playground :)
p.s. for the record, Augustin argues that the Bible should not be taken literally (i.e. Noah’s Ark didn’t literally happen). He cut through all the crap that people always bring up as the “gotcha” moments and said none of that matters more than the core philosophical argument that is laid out.
Game over man, Game over :)
October 31st, 2009 at 2:15 am
ghosts and goblins dont exist. god is in the same category. end of story