Pastor Danny to bring the hate here to Canberra

Nice. Wonder if I’ll be moderated or not – I tried to be civil. Really, I tried.

No, I don’t think you can, PB. Lots of people have tried after it was posted on Richard Dawkins and PZ Myers sites, and its heavily moderated. Nothing critical is getting through apparently.

And on the subject of religious loonies, I’ve noticed that the Scientologists are pretty busy around Civic lately. Warning, warning, warning!

Anyone wishing to pass on their thoughts about the good pastor’s comments can do so here..

http://catchthefire.com.au/blog/2009/02/10/media-release-abortion-laws-to-blame-for-bush-fires/#more-2215

> I think he needed to address the examples that apparently contradict his position.

I’m not sure what you are trying to say…there are stories in the bible (or other religous texts) that somehow prove the existence of god?

Even if we took as true that his arguments are a little lacking, at least he *has* an argument! The religious types of the world have nothing….they fall back on belief whenever challenged. They are, as Dawkins says, deluded…& most likely victims of religous indoctrination as children. Not that I have strong view on this. 😉

It’s been a while since I read through it. Any example I give would probably be shot to pieces through my own poor articulation of my arguments.

VYBerlinaV8_the_one_they_all_copy said :

If he wants to make strong, compelling arguments, I think he needed to address the examples that apparently contradict his position.

I would love an example of the contradiction to his claims.

Hey PB, if you liked the book, then great. My opinion is still that his arguments were lacking.

Fair enough, or “no worries” as you colonials would have it.

I saw a duck once, so god must be real.

Ok, maybe the phrasing was a bit wide there, but I am interested to hear rational counter-arguments and examples that contradict Dawkins’ point of view.

neglects to include other similar stories that may weaken his argument

Which stories weaken the argument that religion is a story?

Picking fallacies in the religious texts has nothing to do with it. In some arguments he chooses certain examples, when other examples exist that refute his argument.

If he wants to make strong, compelling arguments, I think he needed to address the examples that apparently contradict his position.

Hey PB, if you liked the book, then great. My opinion is still that his arguments were lacking.

So Dawkins should have pointed out each of the numerous fallacies in the whole of the bible?

His book would have come in 30 volumes if he had.

Dawkins tackles the prime examples of “belief” and the lack of integrity of the supporting materials and demolishes them very effectively.

He also argues, succinctly, that your choice to “believe” in the biblical fairy tales entitles you to no moral high ground, and that being good at believing biblical fairy tales should give you no moral or political standing in modern society.

Some do, yes, but that doesn’t excuse a ‘scientist’ doing the same.

VYBerlinaV8_the_one_they_all_copy said :

What I’m saying is that he talks about stories from religious texts only when it suits his argument, and neglects to include other similar stories that may weaken his argument.

Isn’t that exactly what the god botherers do?

What I’m saying is that he talks about stories from religious texts only when it suits his argument, and neglects to include other similar stories that may weaken his argument.

I’m not suggesting these stories are hard proof of anything, but cherry picking bits and pieces that suit what he is asserting doesn’t constitute and effective argument to me.

There’s available evidence to prove the existence of some god? I’m sure he’d love to see it.

I don’t think anyone is disputing that Dawkins is a scientist, at least in his approach, but after reading through some of his arguments I still think his conclusions are based on selective evidence, rather than available evidence.

Calling Richard Dawkins religious is like saying a bald man has a hairstyle.

Dawkins’ book my be quite subjective but he does reference his views on evidence, regardless if the evidence is supported or spread thin or whatever. What does religion have to support their views? It certainly isn’t evidence, other than a collection of ‘books’ wrapped up into the Bible. And the collection of books were written decades after the supposed events took place. At least Dawkins and other academics look at evidence, perform research, gather facts, make hypotheses, recalulate their facts and reframe their views if they see new evidence. Science is evolving in nature, whilst religion appears to be stuck in a time warp of 2,000 years ago. But having said that I don’t believe everything I read. But you gotta admit, the story of Lot is in the Bible.

> Basically IMHO he works to his own articles of faith and in his way is as religious as any church-goer.

I don’t think (I nearly said “believe”, hehe) that’s true at all. In fact, he goes to great lengths to explain why this is not the case. He is a scientist, he deals in the realms of evidence, theory, tests, argument, etc. Religion specifically avoids anything of the sort & asks people to simply “believe” everything they say.

Ah pfft.

The only way these guys have any relevance is by making inflammatory comments, then they can claim the world is against both them and Jesus.

On the other hand I thought South Park nailed Richard Dawkins pretty well.

His arguments that I’ve seen and read are not well constructed. This could be because of the popular audience he’s trying to reach.

Basically IMHO he works to his own articles of faith and in his way is as religious as any church-goer.

“Intelligent Design” 😛 The proponents of this are their own best argument against the “theory”

I present “Why won’t god heal amputees” for your perusal;

http://whywontgodhealamputees.com/

> I had a look through ‘The God Delusion’, and frankly thought the arguments made were kinda thin

Thin arguments from one of the leading intellectuals in the world? I doubt it. I found it a little too smug though, the other book I mentioned is better in that regard.

I enjoyed “Religulous”, quite funny. 🙂

Oh, and there’s a new FAQ on the matter here:

http://www.400monkeys.com/God/

XD

I had a look through ‘The God Delusion’, and frankly thought the arguments made were kinda thin. Dawkins cherry picked bits and pieces to make his arguments, and didn’t consider a number of things I thought may have been relevant.

Anyway, just my $0.02.

Dawkins book “The God Delusion” is well worth a read, as is the Christopher Hitchens book “God is not great: How religion poisons everything”. As johnboy pointed out….the scary thing is that these nutters are actually growing in number, & (certainly in the US) more & more entering “mainstream” religion. They’re all deluded, they’re all dangerous. My hope is that the rise of the religous nutters will inspire an even bigger rise of thinking, rational people. This does seem to be happening, thankfully.

If you want an entertaining look at the underlying insanity of organised religion, I recommend the doco “Religulous” 🙂

I enjoyed Parts 1 (religion) and 3 (Fiat Currency). Part 2 (Sept 11 conspiracies) was meh.

I didn’t necessarily agree with much of the film (for example I’m more of a Friedmanite on the issue of fiat currency/gold standard) but it was still quite interesting. You take the good information that you can get out of it.

It was much better than Loose Change, which is embarrassingly stupid.

I like researching conspiracy theories though which is always fun. My current favourite is http://www.lennonmurdertruth.com

This conspiracy theory alleges that John Lennon was really murdered by author Stephen King at the behest of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.

God I love the internet.

Yeah, I thought that myself… although I did like the Venus project bit too. We could use some futuristic architecture!

Zeitgeist (the movie) is hilarious.

It’s a shame that they had to go down the whole Sep 11 conspiracy route, if they’d just left it at the god-botherer bashing it wouldn’t have been so easily dismissed.

Tim Costello is the sane brother.

For those of you who are sneakily suspicious that there’s something slightly suss about organised religion, I would highly recommend you go here http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/

I feel sick.

i had a look at the CTF website. i feel dirty now. I hope costello continues to associate with CTF, i think it will be a death sentence to any chance of becoming PM. I dont want the most spineless politician in history to be our leader.

Beautiful point p1.

Enjoy your freedom to hate and vilify Christians while you have it. If religious vilification legislation comes in you might find most of these posts could cause a bit of trouble. Hang on, it’s already there in Victoria. Oops.

I support the right of women to consider abortion. Even more strongly I support the right of the Victorian people (through their elected representatives or otherwise) to create laws legalising abortion. This man has claimed that an entity he communicates with daily has committed mass murder for religious or political reasons. I think that all the anti-vilification laws should be used against him.

Sounds a bit like when the US televangelists blamed September 11 on “God no longer looking after us because of our tolerance for sinful activities”. Oh, and on the subject of Vic’s religious vilification laws, Pastor Danny ran foul of them when his ministry made disparaging remarks about Muslims.

housebound said :

Enjoy your freedom to hate and vilify Christians while you have it. If religious vilification legislation comes in you might find most of these posts could cause a bit of trouble. Hang on, it’s already there in Victoria. Oops.

I agree we should all bow down and obey the edicts of the Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Confucianism, Christianity, Judaism, cults, or their god may randomly burn areas of the country and kill people.

Pommy bastard said :

God punished believers, good Christian people and their families, by burning them to death, because other people enacted laws which this moron doesn’t like?

Religious stupidity at it’s finest.

“Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius.” — “Kill them all, the Lord will recognise His own.” – Arnaud-Amaury, Abbot of Cîteaux and crusader

Sure… but by codifying them, it will only make it worse. And aside from that, it will actually take away what people assume are their rights. Because …’whatever’… is not expressly listed in the Bill… then you have no right to …’whatever’…

bigfeet said :

And this is one of the compelling reasons that we should not have a “Bill of Rights”

The second we try to codify “rights” , it is open slather for everyone, either for, against, or ambivalent, to any point of view to claim their “rights” are being infringed upon if someone disagrees with them.

Heck I think some people have a pretty good crack at that right now even without a Bill of Rights!

housebound said :

Enjoy your freedom to hate and vilify Christians while you have it. If religious vilification legislation comes in you might find most of these posts could cause a bit of trouble. Hang on, it’s already there in Victoria. Oops.

And this is one of the compelling reasons that we should not have a “Bill of Rights”

The second we try to codify “rights” , it is open slather for everyone, either for, against, or ambivalent, to any point of view to claim their “rights” are being infringed upon if someone disagrees with them.

housebound said :

Enjoy your freedom to hate and vilify Christians while you have it. If religious vilification legislation comes in you might find most of these posts could cause a bit of trouble. Hang on, it’s already there in Victoria. Oops.

Well so long as the same applies to non-religious folk. Christians have no right to expect vilification protection if non-religious people can’t have equal rights too. In fact, in most western countries there is a higher percentage of non-religious people than there are of people belonging to minority religions. eg. there are more non-religious in USA than there are Jews.

But whilst it might not appear so in my previous post I do respect people’s right and freedom of religion, I just don’t agree with them and I especially don’t agree with the paltry excuses being conjured up (by CTFM) that suggest natural disasters are the result of human actions of some sort that just happen not to be aligned with their own narrow beliefs. These things clearly have no correlation.

May I suggest interested folk do a search on Bill Maher: Religulous.

Enjoy your freedom to hate and vilify Christians while you have it. If religious vilification legislation comes in you might find most of these posts could cause a bit of trouble. Hang on, it’s already there in Victoria. Oops.

Pastor Danny is certainly trying to put the fear of god into people, so he saw a vision, dream whatever, of course he would say a vision as he wouldn’t say he was psychic as that would be demonic in his eyes

I had a dream too… and that was people had actually woken up to themselves and accepted religion was just a figment of their imagination! I had always thought religion came about as a result of human fears and insecurities of death but who knows. I also think it comes down to some silly idea that we all exist for a reason and that things don’t just evolve but are created. But some people just can’t see the fact (evidence) from the fiction (faith). But seriously what a delusional crock of shit and to think this moron is coming to Canberra-ish (Eagle Hawk) and that people would actually go and listen to him. Do people have to pay? That’s scary… Anyway, instead of CTFM, let me be your light and your way, at least I will tell you how it is… for real! I believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster and the celestial teapot. Come and preach with me…

[of course all this is my own opinion and not the editors of RiotACT lol]

As wacky and unwelcome as CTFM are, I’m not sure that they are spreading like wildfire. Such groups remain on the fringe of society, and, indeed, on the fringe of the religious spectrum.

A bigger concern than how many people they actually have on the ground is the magnitude of influence they have with politicians. Any smart politician (Zed, can you hear me?) should be wary of endorsement from divisive and small-minded groups like CTFM.

The Brad said :

IMHO, I can’t believe people still recognize a god when there are so many to choose from, yet there (according to whatever religion you pick) can be only one.

I guess they feel that the fact that different beliefs exist doesn’t necessarily invalidate the possibility of a singular and objective truth.

Let’s hope Castello doesn’t change his mind about becoming Liberal leader – according to the Crikey link these idiots are strong backers of his.

from a vision…

Jesus again puts His hands on Peter Costello’s shoulders but I notice the right hand has fingers and thumb spread out.

This signifying 5 members and in the 5th term for coalition, the governmental leadership will be on Peter Costello’s shoulders. Current prayer need on my heart is the new Treasurer to stand with Peter Costello as P.M.

Didn’t work out did it! Amen!

Look out Pastor Arsewipe, I had a dream the other night that some narrow minded bigot got his arse kicked from one end of Eaglehawk to the other because he’d blamed the VIC bushfires on an abortion law being passed.

Sadly they’re not dying out.

Well, hopefully people are more cynical, less gullible, and more intelligent in 2009, than to listen and to believe.

IMHO, I can’t believe people still recognize a god when there are so many to choose from, yet there (according to whatever religion you pick) can be only one.

If you’re lucky you’ll never again see something quite as spitefully evil
I hope you’re right. Unfortunately, I bet you’re wrong and there’ll be a bigger more charismatic loon on the horizon.

No, pommy bastard. He took them into His arms to stand at His Righteous Right Side forever so that they might be spared meeting somebody who’d had an abortion. It was a close shave. Praise Jeebus!

Sadly they’re not dying out.

These simplistic happy clappy bigots are spreading like wildfire.

What if it wasn’t Pastor Danny’s god, but one of the copious other Gods that did it?

Thankfully, this sort of crazy is dying out, otherwise any arsonists caught could claim they were possessed by the hand of Pele, Hawaiian Goddess of Fire.

God punished believers, good Christian people and their families, by burning them to death, because other people enacted laws which this moron doesn’t like?

Religious stupidity at it’s finest.

Catch teh Fire? He needs to die in a fire.

Eagle Hawk is actually in NSW, not ACT… So I guess he couldn’t get a visa to visit our fine city 😉