July 2012 Screwballs

[fm93]

Screwball to bertatberts, nominated himself for TWeb alumni of the Month.

Wait, what? How do you know that?

[Cerebrum123]

Wait, what? How do you know that?

Chrs said so in the shout box. I thought it was ridiculous that he was nominated, and I said so in the shout box. Chrawnus thought that it was either a joke, or that maybe Tassman, or shunyadragon did it. Chrs said that it was bertatberts. I guess I should have explained that the first time, huh?

[Teluog]

Plus they did pretty well building things with the limited resources and knowledge they had. And as far as I know, they, having "destructive cultural behaviors" who were "wrong" about the "relative importance of the Earth" had a much smaller suicide rate than we advanced, superiorly ethical, scientific people.

Not to mention I don't see how science and history and archaeology (given how these are our means of "advanced, superior knowledge") have debunked the Bible.

[TolkienFan]

It's a matter of the implications of materialism: if there is no Creator, then no creation matters more than any other creation. It's the idea that it is outrageous cheek to suggest that the earth is more important than the rest of the universe, and that mankind is more important than the rest of life on earth. And if there is no god, then they're right: if all is cosmic accident, and doomed to a heat death in a few billion years, then the earth really isn't terribly important in the grand scheme of things.

True, I think my confusion is really with the use of "relative." If he had simply said they got the importance of the earth wrong, that would at least be understandable given materialism. As I read the phrase, "relative" implies something else is relatively important according to this view. Of course, I'm probably reading too much into the word choices of a bad communicator without much concern for accuracy.

(Ironically most of the people who claim this get it backwards: the ancients generally thought the earth less important than the heavens and/or definitely at the bottom of the cosmic totem pole, so to speak.)

Indeed, I am reminded of this excerpt from a piece by John C. Wright:

Russell proposes that the universe is so wide that man’s pretension that his life, his actions, or indeed his whole world occupies any significance must be dashed. We are less than one grain of sand on the shores of the blind and numberless stars. Herbert Spencer and H G Wells voice the same thought: modern science proves the cosmos is too big for man to be in the eye of God. Man is too small compared to the universe.

Other writers are not so worried. Russell’s conceit is dismissed with a smile by G K Chesterton, who remarks: “It is quite futile to argue that man is small compared to the cosmos; for man was always small compared to the nearest tree.” (Orthodoxy, 1908)

C S Lewis makes a parallel observation that there is nothing modern, nothing new, in the idea that man is small and the cosmos is large and unfriendly. Medieval man occupied a cosmos equally as large (and inhuman) as our own. Every astronomer since Ptolemy knew the ratio between the Earth and the sphere of the fixed star was “as a point to the heavens”, that is, a magnitude beyond measurement. The physical Earth, the unexplored dark forests and unimagined lands in the antipodes, Taprobane or Cathay, beyond uncharted leviathan-haunted seas, were as distant, as unreachable, to them, as the dark side of the Pluto is to us.

http://www.scifiwright.com/2011/08/f...c-imagination/

You have to love Chesterton's wit.

[Manwë Súlimo]

Gotta love atheist logic:

1) A is larger than B
2) Therefore B is less important than A

1) A is not in the center of B
2) Therefore A is not very important.

[KingsGambit]

Chrs said so in the shout box. I thought it was ridiculous that he was nominated, and I said so in the shout box. Chrawnus thought that it was either a joke, or that maybe Tassman, or shunyadragon did it. Chrs said that it was bertatberts. I guess I should have explained that the first time, huh?

Ah, thanks for pointing that out. I figured it was him or Tassman. Oh well, his chances of winning are about the same as John Edwards winning a presidential election.

[rogue06]

Gotta love atheist logic:

1) A is larger than B
2) Therefore B is less important than A

1) A is not in the center of B
2) Therefore A is not very important.

The brain is not in the center of the body. Therefore the brain is not very important. Though I've met a few folks that just might be true about.

[aikidoka]

Have I missed anything in myu long absence? Here is my nomination, an agnostic I and a Catholic friend have been debating on my facebook page.

"there is just as much proof (and possibly more) for the non-existence of God as there is for the existence of God. Except for one problem, the proof for the existence of God is rooted solely in the bible and not in any actual scientific evidence-yes there is order to the univrse, but then again I am not God, but my life has order because I have made it that way, so therefore, you cannot definitively prove the exiistence of God, no matter how hard you try. On the other hand I cannot definitively disprove God no matter how hard I try, but without scientific and tangible evidence of any type in either direction, I will choose to remain agnostic--like I have said, I am not just accepting something on faith, because faith involves absolutly no thinking or reasoning. Einstein, I beleive it is, once said That all thinking men are atheists--there is a reason for that. You can make the argument all you want that there is a God, but until I see the proof that there is one, my mind has been made up. I can "prove" Santa Clause, Easter bunny and tooth fairy if I really wanted to, but that doesnt prove they exist--same as God. If you believe that God exists, you have to beleive in talking bushes, talking animals, impossible feats of magi(or miracles, same thing) in the Scriptural records and even the works of Christ himself that the writer couldnt agree on, but you dont beleive in the tooth fairy (as no person over about 3 does) but you will beleive in the God of magic? Amazing, at least. Brainwashing (to some degree) at best"

[KingsGambit]

Have I missed anything in myu long absence? Here is my nomination, an agnostic I and a Catholic friend have been debating on my facebook page.

Ahhh, the good old-fashioned Tooth Fairy argument.

[fm93]

Also, it was Hemingway, not Einstein, who supposedly said "All thinking men are atheists." Einstein adamantly denied the label of "atheist" in reference to his beliefs.

[KingsGambit]

Einstein is one of those people whose views are misrepresented by people on both sides of the atheist-theist dispute.

[fm93]

The exchange starting here is pretty amusing. Rstrats has such a profound talent at being wrong.

[Sir Wilshire]

Anti-screwball to my old teaching pastor in 10:00-11:30 of this clip. Funny moment about hermeneutics...

[Rayado]

Sterling anti-screwball to this article in the WSJ about how our speech affects our writing. This would also make for some interesting Ticker fodder.

[Manwë Súlimo]

Anti-screwball to my old teaching pastor in 10:00-11:30 of this clip. Funny moment about hermeneutics...

Overall, he seems all right but he simplifies a lot of things that irritate me. Still, the part you were talking about was funny.