Theological Signficance of the Jewel Wasp.

[tvashtarkatena]

Creationists:

 

There's a great, big, fuzzy, hands-on kitty way up in the sky.

 

 

Evolutionary Theists:

 

There's a great, big, fuzzy, hands-off kitty way up in the sky.

[tvashtarkatena]

Kitty loves you.

[Bug]

Does your bed smell like cat spray this morning?

[G-spotter]

But its nothing you can't find with a fistfull of peyote and a couple days in the desert.

 

Hell if you are a Sufi you can find it by spinning round in a circle for a couple hours.

[Bug]

But its nothing you can't find with a fistfull of peyote and a couple days in the desert.

 

Hell if you are a Sufi you can find it by spinning round in a circle for a couple hours.

 

It helps to wear a funny hat.

[ashw_justin]

Short summary:

 

-Wasp injects cockroach's abdomen with venom A, paralyzing its forelimbs.

-Wasp injects paralyzed cockroach's brain with venom B, reversing the original paralysis but turning it into a zombie.

-Wasp bites off cockroache's antenna, drinks a bit of cockroach's blood to revive itself.

-Wasp bites antenna, and pulls on it to lead cockroach back to its den.

-Wasp lays eggs on 'roach, then seals roach in den.

-Wasp larvae eat their way into the living zombie roach, then selectively feast on its organs to keep the zombie roach alive while they grow.

-Larvae hatch, roach dies.

-Repeat.

Clearly this is God's way of giving us His metaphor for how corporate lobbyists infiltrate the government, incapacitate its normal function, and slowly plunder the country's natural riches through privatization.

 

Or MAYBE He means that the cockroach is the poor innocent average joe taxpayer... wait here a sec I'll go have a chat with Him, and report back to you, His beloved sheeple.

[Stonehead]

I think it’s a disservice to depict the opposition as entirely composed of irrational creationists. What about the theistic evolutionists such as Dr. Francis Collins?

 

Faith is inherently irrational and opposed to reason.

 

You are familiar with the Enlightenment Fallacy, no?

Not So 'Bright'

Atheists aren't as rational as they think.

 

What atheists Kant refute

Reason must know its limits in order to be truly reasonable.

 

Recall also the propositions developed in Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus which concludes with: Proposition 7. What we cannot speak of we must pass over in silence. [in German: "Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen."]

[j_b]

Rational thought isn't based on what we will eventually know, but on what we know today and the supernatural isn't part of it. Also, science doesn't necessarily rely on human senses to describe reality.

[ivan]

reason is a fart in a stiff breeze

[JosephH]

L. Ron Hubbard rode Kant's assertion all the way from science fiction to religion. Kant's impeccable logic unfortunately makes god, santa claus, the tooth fairy, and the bad dreams I had after eating chili last night all equally plausible, defensible, and undeniable. According to Kant it's anything goes with no basis whatsoever for a belief in god being in anyway superior or more rationale than a belief in the easter bunny. If I were religious, I'd counsel giving Kant a wide berth given the company he has you folks keeping.

[tvashtarkatena]

Reason is a dung heap, and I, a cock who crows upon it.

 

"What atheists Kant refutes"

 

With syntax like that, you just know it's going to be an intellectual tour de force.

 

Faith explained:

 

"There's a bunch of stuff we can't explain".

 

"OK".

 

"That's because The Great Big Kitty Way Up In The Sky doesn't want us to."

 

"That sounds just a little bit fucked up"

 

"Only because you're uncomfortable with the unexplained."

[Stonehead]

Rational thought isn't based on what we will eventually know, but on what we know today and the supernatural isn't part of it. Also, science doesn't necessarily rely on human senses to describe reality.

 

Simply put, I'm not striving to prove what is transcendent, only that perhaps one must leave room for the possibility of something akin to God without dismissing it out outright.

[johndavidjr]

Recently listened to "Brief History of Time" on tape. I gather it's all only explicable in equations rather than words. Can't do math.

 

Hawkings seems to think there is a very slight chance God exists, but he may be merely polite or formal or theoretical on this question for those times when the Vatican calls him. Or maybe I wasn't paying attention.

 

Personally I doubt the question matters beyond sociology, but then astro-physics doesn't seem too important to me personally, either.

[Stonehead]

Reason is a dung heap, and I, a cock who crows upon it.

 

"What atheists Kant refutes"

 

With syntax like that, you just know it's going to be an intellectual tour de force.

 

Faith explained:

 

"There's a bunch of stuff we can't explain".

 

"OK".

 

"That's because The Great Big Kitty Way Up In The Sky doesn't want us to."

 

"That sounds just a little bit fucked up"

 

"Only because you're uncomfortable with the unexplained."

 

I'm firmly rooted in the American tradition which begins: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

 

The 1st Amendment speaks of the liberty to believe as you wish, that you may practice according to your religious beliefs free from persecution so long as my beliefs do not largely infringe upon the rights of others. The 2nd Amendment can be understood as the right to protect oneself from the encroachment by others upon one's rights.

 

You speak as if you believe that our founding father's words are anathema to your postmodern(?--post postmodern?) view that sovereign nations, religions, and other traditional forms have been eclipsed by something infinitely better.

 

John Lennon's Imagine really is your anthem isn't it?

[Stonehead]

reason is a fart in a stiff breeze

 

...said the Warden.

[j_b]

Simply put, I'm not striving to prove what is transcendent, only that perhaps one must leave room for the possibility of something akin to God without dismissing it out outright.

 

To be able to dismiss it outright, one first needs a reasonable premise to ponder its existence.

[j_b]

reason is a fart in a stiff breeze

 

That may well be but it's all we got.

[Stonehead]

Right. And your compatriot's sole reliance on rationality properly expanded could lead to the argument that eating babies is ok since it is natural, i.e., it has a basis in the natural world, that it is possibly genetically determined and/or is evolutionarily advantageous as, paradoxically, a survival strategy for the group. Therefore, it is expected as an acceptible lifestyle that must be protected from discrimination as a valid social arrangement.

 

Isn't that the crux of the anti-religiousness bias?

[Stonehead]

L. Ron Hubbard rode Kant's assertion all the way from science fiction to religion. Kant's impeccable logic unfortunately makes god, santa claus, the tooth fairy, and the bad dreams I had after eating chili last night all equally plausible, defensible, and undeniable. According to Kant it's anything goes with no basis whatsoever for a belief in god being in anyway superior or more rationale than a belief in the easter bunny. If I were religious, I'd counsel giving Kant a wide berth given the company he has you folks keeping.

 

So, my question is: The similarity of the seemingly majority view...Is it some indication of the triumph of will (of the secular State) that heralds the success of the educational system in social conditioning to this brave new world? Or is it just an illusion of unity?

[tvashtarkatena]

Reason is a dung heap, and I, a cock who crows upon it.

 

"What atheists Kant refutes"

 

With syntax like that, you just know it's going to be an intellectual tour de force.

 

Faith explained:

 

"There's a bunch of stuff we can't explain".

 

"OK".

 

"That's because The Great Big Kitty Way Up In The Sky doesn't want us to."

 

"That sounds just a little bit fucked up"

 

"Only because you're uncomfortable with the unexplained."

 

I'm firmly rooted in the American tradition which begins: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

 

The 1st Amendment speaks of the liberty to believe as you wish, that you may practice according to your religious beliefs free from persecution so long as my beliefs do not largely infringe upon the rights of others. The 2nd Amendment can be understood as the right to protect oneself from the encroachment by others upon one's rights.

 

You speak as if you believe that our founding father's words are anathema to your postmodern(?--post postmodern?) view that sovereign nations, religions, and other traditional forms have been eclipsed by something infinitely better.

 

John Lennon's Imagine really is your anthem isn't it?

 

a) Founding Fathers cited Great Big Fuzzy Kitty Way Up In The Sky.

b) Founding Fathers wrote Constitution.

Therefore

c) Failure to believe in Great Big Fuzzy Kitty Way Up In The Sky = Beatles Fandom

 

There is a God after all.

Edited November 2, 2009 by tvashtarkatena

[tvashtarkatena]

I do love a good lecture on the Constitution.

[tvashtarkatena]

BTW, Singing the Magic Themes of The Grand Patriotic Era: Our God Inspired Founding Fathers, Lennon as Post-Modern Apocalypse, and Mom's Virginity, only pacifies the brain-eaten Zombie Horde.

 

Recommend PMing KKK.

 

Here's some timely logic right back atcha:

 

a) Your religion discriminates against gays.

 

Ergo

 

b) You suck.

[ivan]

"In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move. "

 

- Douglass Adams, who'd be my god, if he hadn't ruined his omnipotent status in my eyes by going tits up and taking on a frankly gamey smell

[ivan]

stonehead,

 

our forefathers were hardly infallible and i would hope you don't need a list of the things in the constitution that currently have nasty black lines through them as evidence

 

also, jefferson, who was far from revered in his time, was quite hostile to religion - he and many of hte intellectual anchors of the revolution were certainly fans of voltaire, who was a screaming atheist

[JosephH]

L. Ron Hubbard rode Kant's assertion all the way from science fiction to religion. Kant's impeccable logic unfortunately makes god, santa claus, the tooth fairy, and the bad dreams I had after eating chili last night all equally plausible, defensible, and undeniable. According to Kant it's anything goes with no basis whatsoever for a belief in god being in anyway superior or more rationale than a belief in the easter bunny. If I were religious, I'd counsel giving Kant a wide berth given the company he has you folks keeping.

 

So, my question is: The similarity of the seemingly majority view...Is it some indication of the triumph of will (of the secular State) that heralds the success of the educational system in social conditioning to this brave new world? Or is it just an illusion of unity?

You'd have to narrow down exactly which 'majority' and which 'view' you are talking about and frankly I fail to see anything 'brave' or 'new' about the world or any 'majority view'.