I was only trying to help.
But you just made things worse, didn't you?
Well, Knecht got a puppy, but I don't know if it has a name yet?
Ogged returned, but then Heebie banned him and blocked his IP address.
I accidentally revealed your true identity.
I removed Ogged's other kidney and left it on Unfogged's doorstep as an offering, and they got all shouty.
I've mellowed a bit in the interim.
We all planned a meetup and bought plane tickets and will show up on your doorstep in Narnia next Friday. You *do* have room for everybody, right?
I realised that the site had got boring and insufferable and stopped reading it.
oh, so I don't have to go around pretending I know what "I told her it was a toaster", aka ITHIWAT, means? fine then. I feel I should point out that I couldn't access the internet at all due to the technological inaccessibility of my grandfather's house, not because I was ignoring y'all.
Di Kotimy and PoMo are dating (they actually have been for some months, but they've been keeping quiet about it).
gnoLeD darB stopped by and marveled at the fact that EotAW was exceeding Unfogged in the quality of its discussions of NSFW perversions
Oudemia is suffering from a rare neurological condition that left her unable to read any non-Roman scripts. She is engaged in a legal fight with her disability insurer about whether this constitutes a 50% or 100% disability.
A number of unfogged commenters confessed to feeling sympathy over the death of Tony Snow.
LizardBreath is contemplating adopting an orphan from Central Asia.
Brock Landers has a new baby. He did an "ask the mineshaft thread" on what to name it, and decided on Ben's suggestion of "Telemachus".
Slolernr reported that he recently watched porn for the first time, and found it unexpectedly pleasing.
P.S. there are three true statements in 12.
I realised that the site had got boring and insufferable and stopped reading it.
I marvelled over the lack of claims like "Paris Hilton is a saucy, clever actress" and rejoiced.
It's all lies, Alameida! Trust no one!
I feel I should point out that I couldn't access the internet at all due to the technological inaccessibility of my grandfather's house, not because I was ignoring y'all.
I'm curious, alameida, whether you had any inclination to say "Now I've gone through three weeks of detox, the worst is over, so I'm going to give this shit up for good." Your perspective on the matter is particularly interesting given your experience with the hard stuff.
KR wants to know if he reduces you to a warm, happy puddle.
Several people admitted to searching the archives for rare nude pictures of d-squared.
I often find that I don't really miss the internet all that much when there's beautiful nature and suchlike to admire, which is the case in east hampton. but the truth is that if I have to be the voices in a game about my little ponies for the seventieth time in a day I might just as well be reading a goddamn blog at the same time.
if I have to be the voices in a game about my little ponies for the seventieth time in a day I might just as well be reading a goddamn blog at the same time.
DEAR GOD YES. Do your kids get all mad at you, though, for paying insufficient attention to the little ponies?
Knecht is still keeping the puppy's name a secret.
I've been stalking dsquared, and am hoping to increase the nude photo count soon.
I've no idea what else has been going on, I've been away for most of it too.
The irony is that I think they brought back My Little Ponies for the nostalgia value.
KR wants to know if he reduces you to a warm, happy puddle.
I harbour no such delusions, Ms. Geebie.
Knecht is still keeping the puppy's name a secret.
It's not a secret; we just haven't decided yet. (I know, totally lame.) We will probably default to the name he had at the shelter. I guarantee that he will have a name by the time of the PDBS meetup sheduled for Sep. 6 (to which alameida is cordially invited, if she is up for the 20-hour trip from Narnia).
To get all the rich nuances, you really have to read all the comments posted over that period.
I'd like to cancel my last comment and instead recommend that W-lfs-n be put in charge of writing a weekly highlight post, somewhat in the style of the Harper's Weekly Review.
We all got drunk and engaged in a phone sex conference call, called AuralOrgy, as performance art. Good times.
26: I believe Alameida just put all of us in charge of writing it.
We all got drunk and engaged in a phone sex conference call
I once dialed in to a conference line on a speaker phone with a bunch of clients in the room. The correct number was 1-888-***-****, but I accidentally dialled 1-800-***-****. Instead of the conference call line, I got, on the loudspeaker, "For hott one-on-one action, press 1...".
I tried to break up the shocked silence by joking about "Once you get that number stuck in your head...", but they didn't much appreciate the humour.
28: Yeah, see, that's why I needed to suggest what I did: because it was something different.
I ate a sandwich and didn't blog it.
Oh, Standpipe, don't feel shy about linking to all your posts.
F. Winston Codpiece III hung out for a while, then he realised that the site had got boring and insufferable and stopped reading it.
Unrelatedly, I started commenting after a long absense.
bitch: yes, they are annoyed and even as an infant my youngest didn't want to nurse properly if I were looking at the computer instead of INTO HER SHINING EYES.
Thank god PK didn't play that game as a baby, but yeah, now he's all about grabbing my face and forcing me to look at him. So charming.
Do you, like me, fret over the possibility that your failure to pay complete attention to their constant chatter might psychologically damage them FOR LIFE, or are you a reasonable woman?
Unrelatedly, I started commenting after a long absense.
Yeah, you delurk for alameida.
Coulda used you down there on transubstantiation. I think the empiricists won that thread, and I blame you.
Do you, like me, fret over the possibility that your failure to pay complete attention to their constant chatter might psychologically damage them FOR LIFE
Perhaps it is THE OPPOSITE!
Great, so now the fact that I *try* to listen when he speaks is going to fuck him up. Thanks ever so much, Foxy.
36: I've had that debate on the Internet before, at The Valve.
(No one seemed willing to accept that the doctrine is structured so as to be incapable of empirical disproof. Call it bullshit all you want, you can't disprove it by any level of analysis of the bread and wine -- all that you will find are "accidents," which are conceded in advance to be identical to those of normal bread and wine. All you can do is either dismiss it (a live option) or attempt to disprove it from within the presuppositions of Christian theology. Trying to do anything else demonstrates that you really haven't understood what the doctrine is saying.)
the doctrine is structured so as to be incapable of empirical disproof.
Samuel Johnson's attempt is pretty cute.
39:They dismissed it, along with my Wiki link to "Substance Theory" mentioning the usual continentals. I dismissed them right back, with prejudice.
I read your blog, Adam, tho It's possibly the wrong blog. Saw your recent work got linked by Erfani. I like that guy.
Do you, like me, fret over the possibility that your failure to pay complete attention to their constant chatter might psychologically damage them FOR LIFE, or are you a reasonable woman?
Constantly. Like, virtually nonstop. It's actually amazing how much time I spend worrying abotu this when I could just be paying attention to whatever mundane thing she is going on about.
42: The thing is, the content of the worrying actually *is* more interesting than whatever it is they're saying....
I am still wondering if there is a comprehensible version of what the "substance" in transubstantiation is. If everything I can ever access is just the accidents, then... what else is there?
46: Read this. It's pretty satisfying.
That's not our Sam Johnson, BTW, but the earlier one.
If everything I can ever access is just the accidents, then... what else is there?
That in which the accidents inhere. Anyway, you can usually access the substance by accessing the accidents. The eucharist is, for believers, just a miraculous, funny case.
Sheesh, you people, trying to cover the real story up.
See, Oglacticus had finally reached his full size and he was going to consume the earth to power his future travels, so everybody ATM hit on the great idea of fooling him into eating McManus and then Oglacticus would blow up due to indignation overload. So they did that, and it worked like a charm and Oglacticus blew up, but he was too close to the earth when it happened and Africa and southern Asia were destroyed (and you didn't notice! I'll explain!) and there was a nuclear autumn and the Mongol hordes were faced with starvation so they invaded Japan and declared the Toyota Khanate and started conquering all of Asia. That caused all the Americans to freak out and elect John McCain. Oops. Also, the Toyota Khanate had declared that they wanted to cause way more global warming (because Siberia is fuckin' cold!). President McCain was all gonna fight a worldwide thermonuclear war with the Khanate because it made him hot. Faced with this prospect, Cellphone Ben came up with bright idea of using a particle accelerator, a laser lightshow, Labs' disco ball and all of Labs' clothes (used to maximize the number of glamourons) plus the Unfogged cockjoke generator to make a groovy sparkly time machine.
And the time machine sparkled just like it was supposed to! So Heebie took Cellphone Ben and went back in time and made an exact copy of Unfogged, and then used the disco ball thingy (charged up by the previous version of Labs's clothes) to move the original unfogged (with the original cockjoke generator) to Mars, while the substitute Unfogged was equipped with a dummy cockjoke generator. That way the original Unfogged that was then on Mars would be way more interesting to Oglacticus, especially when Heebie posted lots of pictures of bikini models with tiny asses and swimming pictures and stuff. Oglacticus took the bait and was lured to Mars and consumed McManus again, and blew up all over the place in a really great CGI sequence that was way better than that one they stuck on the end of the Star Wars rerelease, but this time he blew up all over Mars! The earth was saved and the Toyota Khanate never existed.
Unfortunately, that left the blog short a McManus so Sifu built RoboMcManus ('The Troll of the Future') and everything was cool, except that now Labs only has two pairs of shorts from Old Navy that he dug out of a dumpster in Weehawken, and there's no working cockjoke generator. Oh, and because the real Unfogged was used to lure Oglacticus to Mars, the substitute Unfogged had to be as inert as possible while the real Unfogged was being used as a lure.
So absolutely nothing happened while you were gone. Apparently.
Well, B & Apo did have group tentacle-sex with a coupla passing space aliens (who had stopped by to watch the show) in the name of international interstellar brotherhood. Twice! But the first time didn't happen.
Also, NASA will no doubt soon be reporting that there is life on Mars as the entire planet is covered in back hair because Oglacticus will be regenerating, just like Godzilla in Godzilla 2000!
max
['Ho-hum.']
46-49:I am not a believer, but I think there is quite a bit at stake, tho I am not equipped to say why:
(When did the Kaufmann come online? Is this kosher?)
(If I had a brain or memory, I would probably link to some Rorty/Davidson arguments)
One thing I don't understand about transubwaystation is the why of it. Why does the christian god need you to drink some blood and eat some flesh? I suppose that for Catholics this must be God's most regular and oft-performed miracle. So one would think that it must be really, really important that you're not drinking plain old bread and wine. But why? I don't recall a satisfactory answer from catholic school.
Of course I realize asking "why does god do x" or
"why does god need y" is just asking for trouble.
and there was a nuclear autumn and the Mongol hordes were faced with starvation so they invaded Japan
Your joke isn't funny.
50:Arrgggghhh:comic books. I spent way too much time last night on Magdelena, Angelus, The Darkness, Witchblade
This is not merely a medium, but a style, maybe an ontology, one that bewilders me.
47: Thanks, AWB. That's an entertaining read, although I stopped halfway through (trying to keep up the pretense that I will do real work sometime tonight [ha!]). It sort of reinforces my impression of the weirdness of the transubstantiation claim, but I do wonder if there's some more coherent version of it that I just haven't encountered. He sort of mocks the irrationality of the view that the substance is changed, but it seems to rest on the physical view of 'substance', which is precisely what substance is not supposed to mean to believers in transubstantiation. It's just not clear to me what it is supposed to mean, since all I encounter is a long list of what it isn't.
Maybe it has to do with communion, Michael.
52: It is a good question. Communion always made perfect sense to me when I thought it was just supposed to be a symbol of joining together as a community, you know, sharing a meal. The transsubstantiation thing threw me for a loop.
I spent way too much time last night on Magdelena, Angelus, The Darkness, Witchblade
Comic books notable only for the extreme to which they take the scantily-clad-women-with-impossible-anatomy motif?
50: Max! This sounds just like a certain Tim Powers novel!
55: Yeah, I think anything that addresses "substance" is going to lead you to something like SJ's argument. I just think it's particularly cute, especially with the diagrams and the increasingly pissy language. He gets himself all outraged. (I tried looking for something other than the pdf of the 1744 edition, but couldn't find a transcription, so sorry if it's hard on the eyes.)
55: This difficulty with substance is not limited to Roman Catholicism. Viz., e.g., Locke's Essay.
The Four Great Errors might be even better, because it attacks empiricists and moralists.
I come at this from Nietzsche, who at least helped me recognize the importance of metaphysics. Metaphysics may be bullshit, but it is useful bullshit.
the truth is that if I have to be the voices in a game about my little ponies for the seventieth time in a day I might just as well be reading a goddamn blog at the same time.
Try being a five year old Snow White's Prince for, like, 50 goddamn times in a day. You can't even get away to read a fucking blog.
I spent way too much time last night on Magdelena, Angelus, The Darkness, Witchblade
I don't know anything about the others, but TNT's Witchblade series was pretty good for a TV comic book show. Shame it only lasted a season and a half or so.
Fucked up the link.
For me it is not just substance. The form of the argument about substance seems similar to arguments about the relation of language to reality.
People say Rorty went too far, but he did give up on a lot of philosophy, and discarded concepts ordinary people use daily and consider necessary.
58:Just the Wiki pages. Wikipedia is an amazing comics resource.
I was prompted by a newsstory of yet another superheroine movie.
Somewhere nearby lurks a good joke about "substance abuse"....
64:Yeah, I watched some of the TNT series, It was decent.
There is an anime "Witchblade" being shown on either Sundance or IFC, but I haven't watched it enough to know if it is related.
Chain commenting. I need to go.
19: They're not your little ponies, alameida.
56. I know you're an orthodox Jew, so your ignorance is excusable. Many, perhaps all, varieties of Christianity have communion. Catholicism is the only one that insists one is eating transubstituted flesh.
Also, the cannibalism-free branches of Christianity evolved at a later date, from the original crypto-cannibalistic lineage. was this EVOlution or DEVOlution? opinions differ.,
Yeah, but the ones that don't have transubstantiation aren't really communing. You can tell by the way they try to cover it up with that phony-baloney "consubstantiation".
Consubstantiation is a whole different thing again, although I never understood what the practical difference versus transubstantiation was meant to be.
I like XL communion wafers because they have 30% more Jesus.
70:Catholicism is the only one that insists one is eating transubstituted flesh. ...not really
Transubstantiation ...which contains a link to the Catholic Encyclopedia online, which tells more than you would ever want to know.
The Eastern Catholic, Oriental Orthodox and Eastern Orthodox Churches, along with the Assyrian Church of the East, agree that the bread and wine truly and actually become the body and blood of Christ. They have in general refrained from philosophical speculation, and usually rely on the status of the doctrine as a "Mystery," something known by divine revelation that could not have been arrived at by reason without revelation. Accordingly, they prefer not to elaborate upon the details and remain firmly within Holy Tradition, than to say too much and possibly deviate from the truth. However, they do speak clearly of a "change" (in Greek μεταβολή) or "metousiosis" (μετουσίωσις) of the bread and wine. Met-ousi-osis is the Greek form of the word Tran-substantia-tion.
71:It is not cannabalism, because the "accidents" of bread remain in the host.
Hell here's the New Advent for anyone who wants to go into it depth. It is hardcore doctrinal, or sumpin. Lots of history.
Orthodoxy Catholicism is the only one that insists one is eating transubstituted flesh.
On preview, what bob said.
cannabalism
Cannabalism is when you eat Jesus while high.
12.6 is amusingly pseudo-accurate. Or inverse-accurate, or something.
Typing one-handed here - due to BABY KAI.
Re. transubstantiation and alla that, I guess PZ *did* "desecrate" a communion wafer, although apparently it's unclear whether the damn thing had been consecrated or not. So anyway, the argument that he was "being satiric" no longer applies.
I still think he's not being a dick, but it *is* a little childish, I gotta admit. The blogosphere makes idiots of us all.
White people like to name their babies after NPR hosts.
Don't make me come up there, peter.
There are no really good reasons for the name, but that wasn't even one of the marginal ones.
Haha, sorry.
That is the only person named "Kai" I can think of, though. We hope your baby becomes equally prominent in the intellectual universe.
81: It's cool, JRoth. Real white people know that Marketplace is produced by American Public Media, not NPR. peter's probably faking his whiteness. Which is totally fine, 'cause I'm a swipple. And I like that.
reading the wikipedia article, i'm getting that Catholics insist that it's really Jesus b/c it's a way of telling themselves, despite all evidence to the contrary, that Jesus really is with them. And I guess the reason god does it is because, despite all other evidence to the contrary, he likes handing out warm fuzzies.
In fact, my twin daughters are named Soraya and Ofeibea.
84:I read the New Advent entry a couple times. Hardcore. As a faltering step, I might say that acceptance of the doctrine of Transubstantion and participation in the Sacrament is a recognition of God's simultaneous Immanence & Transcendance.
But not only that. Oh well.
I was going to connect Spinoza to this, to try to connect parts of this argument to Judaism. I don't want to exclude or offend. Try the main Stanford article.
But as I was closing my RSS feeds I saw that Thomas J J Altizer was contributing at Kotsko's Place. I remember the Time cover.
As someone who has never believed for a single moment, who thinks himself somehow incapable of faith, I can't explain my interest in theology.
Aren't we supposed to be making up relating magic happy fun times for alamedia?
Like when Knecht shot a wildebeest to protest Obama's Hitler campaign just after Jammies got drunk with a certain unnamed hedge fund, in order to get back at apostropher for getting his (apostropher's) junk all up in his (Jammies's) face or possibly to drown his sorrows after heebie started seeing an Amish therapist, who was only helping her work through Stanley's arrest for trying
to sneak al-Maliki over the border fence, which wouldn't even have happened if Becks hadn't spilled a three-cheese omlette all over herself while driving, so that she missed the pickup spot, though, admittedly, she might also have been distracted by Di's live-blogging her break-up with some guy who's into Mixed Martial Arts and who isn't, I don't think, one of Charles Rangel's constituents, but who was, I believe, the first person to get a copy of the current New Yorker in the mail, the cover of which had been torn off by Sifu wee y (new lead guitarist for P'wns Arrow) just because Blume made him take down his mezuzah only seconds after Oscar Pistoni failed to qualify (ogged's fault, by the way) for the Olympics and Dana Torres did qualify, which we thought was upsetting Labs, but it turns out he was all bent out of shape because he didn't get a job as a KBR Electrikz Very Specialist, despite having been detoxed and boiled with AWB and having been allowed to stroke Bave's mustache, *and* having put up a post with like 30 fucking dicks, or crackers, or something like that, which stras insisted on eating and then vomited onto snark & foxytail's new fan (or was it their stand mixer?) which forced them to cancel the party they were going to throw so Emerson could announce his engagement to a carp -- JRoth & Brock's new babies are collecting for a suitable gift; mrh's twins will cater -- though the engagement might be off if the carp decides to run away with Armsmasher to live in some sort of math equation-type building in Dubai where they will open a branch of Cala's Fully Ripened Hotties® and where, come to think of it, ari may want to go now that he's admitted to sleeping with Gordon Lightfoot (soup's mileage may vary).
Oh, and w-lfs-n went on about some damn thing or other.
87: There were a few more wizards cocksucker, but, yeah, that gets it right. And is fucking hilarious.
Holy crap, Kraab. I must buy a cap to doff it in your general direction. That rules.
As someone who has never believed for a single moment, who thinks himself somehow incapable of faith, I can't explain my interest in theology.
I inwardly cringe even typing the "g" word. I feel like how a normal adult would feel if he found himself in an earnest conversation with other adults about the deep subtleties of say, the metaphysics of Harry Potter, which, in this analogy, most people actually believe is real. I do make as much effort as I can to be charitable, but i find religion to be so very absurd.
87: And then suddenly everyone got run over by a truck crushed by a truck flipping end-over-end.
50: Max! This sounds just like a certain Tim Powers novel!
Eh? Oh, Three Days to Never? I guess it does. I wasn't thinking about that one tho. (I did finally read it last year, but it's not all that good.) I was thinking of one Kirby-drawn issue of the Fantastic Four, wherein they go to the 'anti-matter' universe which is populated Negative Zone which is populated by various nasty entities including Annihilus - and that issue was... Fantastic Four Annual #6. From the looks of things, apparently various people have tried to improve Annihilus and fucked it all up, as you would expect.
I spent way too much time last night on Magdelena, Angelus, The Darkness, Witchblade
My condolences.
Comic books notable only for the extreme to which they take the scantily-clad-women-with-impossible-anatomy motif?
Back in the 80's I was at a convention and Brad somebody (a mini-comics publisher) was explaining how he had a hard time trying to get this older guy (Ward) to tone down the enourmous racks. "Everytime he drew breasts, he was trying to make them a little better, which made them a little bigger, and after awhile they he would be drawing them bigger than the woman's head. At that point if he tried to draw them smaller, they just didn't look right."
max
['My cousin has managed to avoid falling into that trap so far.']
I stand in awe of 87. I really, really do. What a majestic thing it is, a monument to I'm not sure what.
92: So Sifu is Reed Richards?
I've always loved how Annihilus is also known as "The Living Death That Walks." Makes me imagine a whole family of them. "I am Obnoxius, the Living Death That Blogs!"
I still think he's not being a dick, but it *is* a little childish, I gotta admit.
He's being a dick. That's his natural state. He wasn't a dick to you because you're on the side of the Lord all that is good and true Science.
Regardless of the fact that it's just a cracker, it has intangible value to someone, and apparently the stupid fucking cracker was stolen from someone and may (or may not) have been handed off to PZ. If it was it was stolen and handed off to PZ, that's not any different than stealing someone's cherished photo or knickknack or what have you. Or stealing a menorah (a cheap menorah, made in China out of lowest quality aluminum) and sticking seven penis candles in it and declaring the seven days of CHOADukah. The menorah would be stolen, the act would be abysmally tacky and awful and approximately 40-11 billion people would descend to denounce it as an anti-semitic act. Which, in fact, it would be.
That he's drawing fire from Bill Donahue or whatever the fuck his name is, doesn't change anything; those two have far more in common than either would be willing to admit.
max
['Unfortunately, fuckhead #1 is in the right on this one, and fuckhead #2 is in the wrong.']
God, can you people shut the fuck up about the fucking cracker? Agonize someplace where it doesn't bore me so fucking much.
40-11 billion people
So, 29 billion people?
Either that, or -10,999,999,960 people.
Of course, IRL Heebie did nearly break the site with a 1200 comment thread that ALAMEIDA NOW HAS TO READ. There will be a test.
I will read AWB's link on transsubstantiation after I retire.
And then Kobe died and we all went home.
Then I found out I was running version 2.0, and it wasn't compatible with any of my other software, so I said whatthehell and upgraded to Ubuntu.
96: Ooh, the eucharistic argument bores Walt! Let's keep going with it, then.
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BHO's Berlin speech looks very well tuned for the European centre-right (won't play so well in Britain because of historic insularity), but how will it go down at home? Admitting that America can't do everything on her own? Admitting that America has sometimes been less than perfect? To a bunch of foreigners? Sounds a bit treasonous to me.
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103: Nothing more than you would expect from a "citizen of the world".
i was thinking why the moral lesson thread did not move me that much, like do i have double standards something
as i understood transsubstantiation is some kind of sacred symbolism that people believe in, it may be just bread and vine for not religious people, but i think bread and vine itselves are very wondrous things and deserve worshipping :) and if it is believed to substitute Jesus himself i can understand that religious people can be offended that much in that incident
but the offended religious people were like powerful majority able to defend themselves and the offensive minority did wrong insulting others, so i had no side to take
if it was other religion i would perceive them minority perhaps here, but in their regions where they are powerful majority i'll sympathize the opressed agnostics/atheists perhaps, but it's always better of course try to treat respectfully, avoid offending others' religious feelings and that like pettily
it's different to state and defend one's position that one believes/ doesn't believe in God and everyone's free to have his/her opinion or try to ridicule and do mean things to others, force others to not believe/ believe
It's not like there's no precedent for desecrating sacred objects to show that they have no intrinsic power. Confer that dick St. Boniface.
That story reminds me of Joyce's priest, from the two sisters' tale in Dubliners. He at least had the decency to renounce his faith upon realizing that the Eucharist could be desecrated with no fear of divine punishment.
106: Yeah, that was a pretty dickish move, too.
Or, as related in God's Own English: And he took the calf which they had made, and burnt it in the fire, and ground it to powder, and strawed it upon the water, and made the children of Israel drink of it.
I haven't been around much for the past few weeks either. It's partly because I was traveling and didn't have much access to a computer. But I wasn't on much in the days before that either and I'm back now and I still haven't been on as much as usual, and that's because I'm usually here to procrastinate while at work and I haven't been working.
87: thanks kraab, that's just the kind of thing I was hoping for. ari and gordon lightfoot, eh? well I never.
someone link me to the 1200 comment heebie thread? I have to sew bonnets for stuffed animals later.
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Randy Pausch has passed at last.
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I did finally read it last year, but it's not all that good.
It's true, it's not, which made me sad, because good Tim Powers is so good, and I'd got my hopes up.
Yeah, that was a pretty dickish move, too.
There's also the story from the Qu'ran about that little scamp Abraham smashing the false Gods in order to catch the polytheists in a logical contradiction.
Behold! [Abraham] said to his father and his people, "What are these images, to which ye are (so assiduously) devoted?" They said, "We found our fathers worshipping them." He said, "Indeed ye have been in manifest error - ye and your fathers." They said, "Have you brought us the Truth, or are you one of those who jest?" He said, "Nay, your Lord is the Lord of the heavens and the earth, He Who created them (from nothing): and I am a witness to this (Truth). "And by Allah, I have a plan for your idols - after ye go away and turn your backs".. So he broke them to pieces, (all) but the biggest of them, that they might turn (and address themselves) to it. They said, "Who has done this to our gods? He must indeed be some man of impiety!" They said, "We heard a youth talk of them: He is called Abraham." They said, "Then bring him before the eyes of the people, that they may bear witness." They said, "Art thou the one that did this with our gods, O Abraham?" He said: "Nay, this was done by - this is their biggest one! ask them, if they can speak intelligently!" So they turned to themselves and said, "Surely ye are the ones in the wrong!" Then were they confounded with shame: (they said), "Thou knowest full well that these (idols) do not speak!" (Abraham) said, "Do ye then worship, besides Allah, things that can neither be of any good to you nor do you harm? "Fie upon you, and upon the things that ye worship besides Allah. Have ye no sense?"
Cassirer relates a similar move on the part of one of the disciples, I think, toward the end of the second volume of The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms.
Here's an analogy for you: Myers is like a stoic who, himself reconciled to the fact that persons are mortal, and not discomfited even by the death of his wife (just as he would not be discomfited by the breaking of his favorite jug), laughs at mourners at a funeral, and offers to kill people, to prove it's just a natural event without great significance and nothing to fear.
117:At one point I had started to write a longish paragraph attempting to use Schoolmen argumentation with "Truth" or "Science" or "Data" in place of "Substance" and "Accidents" or whatever to show that at least for me Myers is mostly about a slight change in language than a revolution in method. Quote from Spinoza, who equated God & Nature, could do the trick.
I am an eye-closed run toward the cliff kinda skeptic. I believe nuthin. If we are zooming toward a Malthusian age in which several billion people die, then the relative superiority of Reason & Science has been self-refuted. Those billions better off not born if living is to watch each other suffer & die, not comprehending where it all went wrong, without the comfort of an eschatology.
Or not. A nihilist shouldn't care.
bob,
You need to read some Robert Kennedy. We are not passengers zooming anywhere. The destination is irrelevant. We are not passive. The journey is what it is all about. Geeze. How can you not know this?
Journey, schmurney. I'm walking the dogs to the park and sit under a tree
Someday schmove will find you
Schmeak those schmains that bind you
bob,
Have you thought this through? The journey towards enlightenment is never-ending and very important. How in the world does your dismissal of the journey fit in with the reference to the tree of wisdom?
I think you haven't thought this through completely.
Unless you are refusing the journey. You don't strike me as that kind of guy but I could be wrong.
116: wow, interfaith-y--that story's in the haggadah my in-laws use.
dsquared's reaction to the Myers thing is the best I have read.
"It's not like there's no precedent for desecrating sacred objects to show that they have no intrinsic power."
Plenty of precedent. A very effective tool for proselytyzing against a religion. But in real life, I find most people who proselytyze about religion annoying.
Anyway, I don't think the specific purpose in this case was to show the lack of communion wafers' power--even the people who believe in transubstantiation don't believe that the wafer is going to hop out of the garbage and choke Myers in his sleep. He was trolling Donohue & pals, to prove that they are jerks. It's a mutually beneficial flame war: Donohue gets attention & gets to portray Myers as teh very face of the secular humanist left oppressing Catholics; Myers get attention & gets to portray Donohue as teh very face of Christianity. I don't think it's quite that calculated--I'm sure Myers really does hate Donohue's guts, given that I do, and I'm sure Donohue honestly has convinced himself that he is fighting for God and against anti-Catholic bigotry. But functionally, that's what's going on.
Giblets plans to tell a small child this weekend that the truth is always the exact midpoint between two opposing arguments.
That I thought this was the funniest comment in the CT thread probably says too much about me. See, I do so have a sense of humour. And use affected Anglophile spellings as often as possible.
I used to have lunch at a park which was taken over by a Christianist who told us to our face that were damned sinners. You also have whole TV networks which routinely explain that seculars, atheists, and most mainline Christians were doomed to horrible deaths followed by an eternity of torture. It's not like those people would quite desecrating our shit if we quit desecrating their shit. They've made an industry of desecrating secularity (and, among other things, misrepresenting the Constitution and American political history).
"Don't annoy the loonies" isn't a bad rule, and there are also some perfectly wonderful Catholics who are angry about this. Nonetheless, this would be a better country if the Christianists just had to grin and bear it.
He's not just incidentally annoying them; that's the entire point of the exercise. He is deliberately provoking them so he can point at them and say "look, the Christian right is crazy & stupid". Donohue makes his career off this bullshit. I obviously don't object to gay people "provoking" the Christian right by existing & having relationships, or biology teachers "provoking" them by wanting to teach biology correctly; I don't object to calling repugnant stuff like Left Behind repugnant. But poking Bill Donohue with a stick so Bill Donohue gets all huffy & you can all get lots of hits & maybe be on tv is not quite the same thing.
Bill Donahue is perfectly happy to annot us. In a free country you should be able to deliberately annoy Bill Donahue (in a law-abiding way) as much as you want. I'm glad someone is willing to stick their neck out to establish that principle. It's like the things people do to establish an easement right.
