Toadfish Thought of the Day

[Sibling Chatty]

in a Nobel prize acceptance speech

I dunno...that might have been an appropriate one for Gore, for a given value of 'motherf***er' equaling Shrubito.

[The Meromorph]

Sorry, I've been otherwise occupied since I posted that. I did hope to stimulate a discussion (actually there several discussions I envisaged being generated), but I don't think I anticipated the responses it did provoke.
I thought it an unusually eloquent and very focused rendition of a point that is indeed often used today in arguments with the more naive 'fundies'.

So, why did I post it there?

1. Partly for it's actual point. I had noticed, and grown slightly uncomfortable with, a tendency in our siblinghood to display a 'warm and fuzzy' attitude toward a basic idea of 'a great everything'. I didn't, and don't, expect to provoke a discussion of whether such a 'thing' 'exists', or even whether it's a useful 'mental model'. I did want to use this particularly eloquent statement (which I had just encountered elsewhere) to suggest that 'warm and fuzzy' might not be an especially appropriate attitude. I thought that might be an interesting discussion.

2. Partly because Robert Ingersoll was a 19th century prominent speaker etc. I don't endorse all of his thinking, I haven't read much of it yet, and only 'see his point' in some of what I have read. But I do find it interesting that many of the topics he addressed over a hundred years ago, are basically still 'bones of contention' today, at least in America.
I suggest reading his (short) Wiki Biography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_G._Ingersoll  Just because you or I don't agree with him, doesn't mean it wouldn't be an interesting discussion...

3. Expecting a rational and deepening discussion (shows how accurate my judgement is  ), I could see this leading to another interesting discussion that we've kind of danced around before. If we are entitled to kill cancer wherever we find it (and I personally endorse that view), but not entitled to kill humans (ditto), where do we draw the line?


I intended to send your mind 'skittering sideways', not to provoke you to beating me with a stick!


Re-reading your posts (while on the fourth draft of this response ), it is obvious that I am missing something basic (humanity?  ). Why is this piece of Ingersoll's offensive? I truly don't understand the tenor of your responses here...

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

I read the quote as an ironic tongue in cheek statement and it placed a smile in my face the first time I read it, but then again I consider my self more agnostic than theist and I do not believe possible nor comforted by the existence of a being with the 5*. I do understand why the quote may be taken as something offensive by some, but then again we are dealing with what I believe are flaws of creationism.

Given that cancer as we understand it now, is the apparent result of a type of random mutations, the thought intersects with a reasoning I had the other day about the implications of omniscience and the existence of chance: an omniscient being by definition will know (among other things) the future. The implication is that there is no chance, the future is written (destiny), and that we have no real free will.

My conclusion is that the absolute characteristics of God (as traditionally defined) create too many problems to allow his existence, and that if there is a god he mustn't have the 5. That obviously goes against everything a strict theist believes and may be offensive to them. Is it offensive here?

* the 5 are: omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, omni benevolence, and eternity.

[Sibling Chatty]

Sometimes, when there's an elephant standing on your jugular vein, the general discussion of elephants can make you touchy.

My particular elephant is stomping my liver and lymph nodes, and there's something that COULD be done, but...elephants don't get removed in convenient places.

Even if you substitute Nature, red in tooth and claw--it's still an elephant standing on my jugular vein.

Then again, maybe I'm just an ignorant Fundie...

RE: Tennyson's In Memoriam. I find that there's no place for "freethinkers" to accept those who don't think freely like them--sorta like Tennyson did. A quote from an analysis--

the poem is also a deeply philosophical reflection on religion, science, and the promise of immortality. Tennyson was deeply troubled by the proliferation of scientific knowledge about the origins of life and human progress: while he was writing this poem, Sir Charles Lyell published his Principles of Geology, which undermined the biblical creation story, and Robert Chambers published his early evolutionary tract, Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. In "In Memoriam," Tennyson insisted that we hold fast to our faith in a higher power in spite of our inability to prove God's existence: "Believing where we cannot prove." He reflects early evolutionary theories in his faith that man, through a process lasting millions of years, is developing into something greater. In the end, Tennyson replaces the doctrine of the immortality of the soul with the immortality of mankind through evolution, thereby achieving a synthesis between his profound religious faith and the new scientific ideas of his day.

Current Progressive political thought is pointing toward the idea that any such synthesis is an anomaly and should be banished. Current "tolerance" based communities may be going the same way?? Fine.
==================

As to the "great everything" concept...Mero, either you're reading MUCH more theistic intent into it than I can feature, or else, I'm just out on a limb thinking that WE, as a part of that 'great everything that is', are here to try to be more "warm and fuzzy". 'S--OK. I'm not feeling too warm or to fuzzy recently anyway.

[Griffin NoName]

Appropriate uses: shooting eurotrash, throwing bombs down elevator shafts, and driving cars into helicopters

~Qwerty

Inappropriate uses:  Declining more tea at a vicarage garden party , in a Nobel prize acceptance speech, when admiring your fiance's parents' garden.

Disagrees. Doris Lessing used it admirably for the Nobel.

[Sibling Lambicus the Toluous]

Appropriate uses: shooting eurotrash, throwing bombs down elevator shafts, and driving cars into helicopters

It is very useful for the shooting sports.  The phrase enables one to hit an inch-thick cable with a revolver at ~200 feet, and increases the magazine capacity of automatic pistols to at least 30 or 40 rounds.

Inappropriate uses:  Declining more tea at a vicarage garden party , in a Nobel prize acceptance speech, when admiring your fiance's parents' garden.

In your fiancee's parents' garden, re-enacting the "how much for your women?" restaurant scene in The Blues Brothers is much more appropriate, especially if said fiancee has an almost-of-age younger sister.

[Darlica]

I intended to send your mind 'skittering sideways', not to provoke you to beating me with a stick!

*drops stick* But I thought I was flogging a dead philosopher... 

On a more serious note, I'll try to answer you using your numbered arguments as a starting point. Of cause the answers just my point of view but since I reacted strongly I feel that I might owe you that.

1. Partly for it's actual point. I had noticed, and grown slightly uncomfortable with, a tendency in our siblinghood to display a 'warm and fuzzy' attitude toward a basic idea of 'a great everything'. I didn't, and don't, expect to provoke a discussion of whether such a 'thing' 'exists', or even whether it's a useful 'mental model'. I did want to use this particularly eloquent statement (which I had just encountered elsewhere) to suggest that 'warm and fuzzy' might not be an especially appropriate attitude. I thought that might be an interesting discussion.

When I read this thread (not the forum in general) I've come to expect little positive nuggets of thoughts and sometime wisdom. It's a puts a smile on my face thread for me, I didn't expected a text such as this here (I'll explain how I reacted to the text it self and why later). I can, after reading your last post understand that you wanted to create an discussion and I'd love to see that discussion and where it might lead but I do think you should have started a independent thread and explained your thoughts about it, giving the text some context some context so to say. 

2. Partly because Robert Ingersoll was a 19th century  prominent speaker etc. I don't  endorse all of his thinking, I haven't read much of it yet, and only 'see his point' in some  of what I have read. But I do find it interesting that many of the topics he addressed over a hundred years ago, are basically still 'bones of contention' today, at least in America.
I suggest reading his (short) Wiki Biography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_G._Ingersoll  Just because you or I don't agree with him, doesn't mean it wouldn't be an interesting discussion... Smiley 

I had no idea of who this person was or when he lived when I wrote my first reply, and I have apologized for not doing a proper research before I answered. Had I known when he lived I would probably written another first reply. I read as if it was a modern text and a, in my point of view, badly executed tongue in cheek text trying to parody born again Christians/American religious right wing.
It turns out I was very wrong. It was a 100 years old and not a parody.

3. Expecting a rational and deepening discussion (shows how accurate my judgement is  Shocked), I could see this leading to another interesting discussion that we've kind of danced around before. If we are entitled to kill cancer wherever we find it (and I personally endorse that view), but not entitled to kill humans (ditto), where do we draw the line?

You are absolutely right when you say that just because we don't agree with him, it doesn't mean that his point of view wouldn't be an interesting base for a discussion.
This discussion seems very interesting and I look forward to read it but as I said before posting it in this thread especially without comments might have been what triggered the negative response.

Now why do I find this piece of Ingersoll's offensive? I think I answered that in my first post. I think it diminishes the suffering and pain cancer causes both in those who have been diagnosed and lived or died with cancer and their family and kin who seen what this disease have done with their loved ones.   

[beagle]

I didn't find anything offensive about Mero's original post, but then, so far I've had the luxury of bracketing cancer with any number of other "bad things" that undermine my view of universal benevolence, rather than contemplating it on a daily basis. Ingersoll's comments seem a suitable rejoinder to the simplistic "All things bright and beautiful" white picket fence view of the world that some (emphasize some) theists insist on projecting.  Maybe I'm just reacting badly to being made to sing endless hymns as a kid about how wonderful God was and what a great world he'd made (and then made to sing them again if we didn't sing loudly enough).

1. Partly for it's actual point. I had noticed, and grown slightly uncomfortable with, a tendency in our siblinghood to display a 'warm and fuzzy' attitude toward a basic idea of 'a great everything'. I didn't, and don't, expect to provoke a discussion of whether such a 'thing' 'exists', or even whether it's a useful 'mental model'. I did want to use this particularly eloquent statement (which I had just encountered elsewhere) to suggest that 'warm and fuzzy' might not be an especially appropriate attitude. I thought that might be an interesting discussion.

Well, the "Great Everything" has been a bit too vaguely defined for me to be sure quite how warm and fuzzy it is.  With a suitable definition that supposes that part of embracing the G.E. (also known as the Universe) is a realisation of how puny and insignificant we are, it's possible to see no conflict. Most of us struggle to achieve that level of detachment though.
Personally I think it is a useful model, in the sense of accepting that "That's just the way it is" is every bit as useful a model as constructing a pantheon of gods and demons. It's the model that seems to serve other advanced animals rather well.

3. Expecting a rational and deepening discussion (shows how accurate my judgement is  ), I could see this leading to another interesting discussion that we've kind of danced around before. If we are entitled to kill cancer wherever we find it (and I personally endorse that view), but not entitled to kill humans (ditto), where do we draw the line?

I suspect we'll draw it where we always have. We are "entitled" to kill someone, some animal, something, if sufficiently unlike us for us not to think the we're setting a precedent that could rebound and cause trouble to us.

Re-reading your posts (while on the fourth draft of this response ), it is obvious that I am missing something basic (humanity?  ). Why is this piece of Ingersoll's offensive? I truly don't understand the tenor of your responses here...

I don't get it either. Suspect you'd have "got away with it" if the article had been about the structural beauty of a particular killer virus that hadn't affected anyone here (not likely given the date, but you know what I mean...). Probably just too close to home.  Also atheistic tone articles are judged by different standards. A person who is sure God exists is a regular religious person, an atheist who is sure God doesn't is an absolutist.

[Griffin NoName]

Extracting the notion of beauty alone, without the message, if one looked through a microscope at cancer cells growing, without knowing what they were, could they be described as beautiful?

An allied thought, did Ingersoll actually see what he describes, or was it guess work?

I hear some axe murders et al think the process of mutilation is beautiful.

Some thoughts on why you wouldn't get away with it, not specific to anyone here:

Cancer patients are encouraged to visualise pacman gobbling up their cancer cells. Cancer is evil; pacman is good. Is evil ever beautiful?

Is the beauty in tidal waves meaningful to a community who have just been wiped out by one?

Cancer takes over. Is the tirent master's beauty meaningful to the slave (apart from Jane Eyre)?

Perhaps this all needs a thread called Thoughts for Several Days.

[ivor]

Volcanoes are beautiful until ash falls on one's village. 

[Sibling Qwertyuiopasd]

I suppose cancer might be thought of as sublime, but more of a micro-sublime, as volcanoes and mountains and oceans are sublime in large part because of their size and force.

~Qwerty

[beagle]

Is evil ever beautiful?

Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell. 

I suppose cancer might be thought of as sublime, but more of a micro-sublime, as volcanoes and mountains and oceans are sublime in large part because of their size and force.

Good point. Beautiful is a "too eye of the beholder" word to use.

[The Meromorph]

Darlica,
I didn't post my thoughts on it originally, because I was wanting a discussion of the piece, not of my thoughts on it. (that's intended just as information, not justification or excuse).

Everyone,
I still don't quite get it, and I accept that's probably a failing in me, should we not post anything except 'hate mail' about any disease that affects anyone here? or anyone anyone here knows? or is it just about cancer(s)? or is quoting an agnostic about his beliefs somehow a criticism of others who hold different beliefs?

What I got from the piece was essentially 'be consequent' (a view forcefully expressed by others here before now), as in 'if you want to claim your deity of choice is responsible for everything, then it has to take responsibility for everything...'.

I had more or less this conversation, about 16 years ago, with a definitive 'naive fundie' (she sent most of her money to the PTL Club).  I spent just about a whole day (15 hours or more) producing and recording a demo of her gospel song, for free, and when we were done, she spent about ten minutes of continuous speech thanking her god, and said not a word of thanks to me. I smiled and said "You're welcome.' She responded that she "expected God to thank me". (I wasn't greatly surprised,and not at all annoyed, but I was amused.) I said "Well thank you for that thought, but, by the way, that's not my god, it's yours."  She didn't even blink, but started telling me it was my god, it was everybody and every thing's god. We progressed into a discussion of that and I pointed out at one stage that her statement implied her god was the god of cockroaches, axe-murderers, and loathsome diseases, as well as beautiful things, and I didn't expect she really meant to say that ... She thought about it for a while and decided that yes, it had to mean that, so she did mean that...  We parted amicably at that point. She did have a thoughtful expression as she drove off. 



[edited for syntax and spelling]

[Sibling Chatty]

A person who is sure God exists is a regular religious person, an atheist who is sure God doesn't is an absolutist.

OH, OK.

Got it.

Ooops, gotta read Mero's post.

'if you want to claim your deity of choice is responsible for everything, then it has to take responsibility for everything...

Anybody in the Toadfish, actual Toadfish believe that?

Anyone? Bueller?

No...

OK, let's discuss it.

I don't anymore attribute everything about the universe to the God I do happen to believe in than I attribute everything evil about any one human or any group to The Devvviiiillllll.

Now, since we're essentially "preaching to the choir" by saying that the attribution of Everything To God is a fallacy...ummmm. What.

My bad. My baggage.

[The Meromorph]

Hhhm. Qwerty might make that statement about the FSM... 

But I don't think he has a problem being consequent... 

Was I preaching at the choir (rather than to the choir)? Was that why I was annoying?