The Funny Side of Religion

Wereghost

Liamario wrote: »

He may be referring to the fact that your sex has been revealed.

Whatever about her tuts, she should definitely cover up her sex.

ninja900 wrote: »

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-19594442



Ooh the ironing, from the point of view of any 20th century Irish catholicism sufferer.

Did Pope Ben just make a distinction between religion and individual conscience? If he did then I think he deserves credit for that.

recedite

Scrawny71 wrote: »

Did Pope Ben just make a distinction between religion and individual conscience? If he did then I think he deserves credit for that.

Is he not fundamentally the political head man of a religious State himself?
I think he's trying to have a pop at the Islamic politicians, telling them to go easy on non-muslim minorities when they take power. But he's pussyfooting around the issue so much that his words have lost all their meaning.

G.K.

dr.bollocko

Liamario

dr.bollocko wrote: »

General Relativity

bluewolf wrote: »

Huge blog on either skepchick/FTB/somewhere on Miss/Mrs/Ms, when to use them, who to use them on and being a misogynist if you use the wrong one.

joseph brand

joseph brand

First World Atheist problems.

Kivaro

joseph brand wrote: »

First World Atheist problems.

I still wouldn't capitalize the word, no matter where it appeared.

god is not real.

See it's fine.

Penn

Kivaro wrote: »

I still wouldn't capitalize the word, no matter where it appeared.

god is not real.

See it's fine.

mikhail

Penn wrote: »

Capitilisation is a spelling issue, not a grammatical one. If you're going to play pedant, do it right.

robindch

mikhail wrote: »

Capitilisation is a spelling issue, not a grammatical one. If you're going to play pedant, do it right.

"Do it correctly" -- using the adjective "right" as an adverb is dubious at best

Penn

mikhail wrote: »

Capitilisation is a spelling issue, not a grammatical one. If you're going to play pedant, do it right.

No, it is a grammatical error as the word is still spelled correctly.

UDP

Penn wrote: »

No, it is a grammatical error as the word is still spelled correctly.

I would contend it is an orthographic error.

PopePalpatine

That would be an ecumenical matte- er, error.

robindch

UDP wrote: »

I would contend it is an orthographic error.

<pedant level="extreme">

Perhaps "orthographic" -> "orthographical"? Since "graphic" is one of the few English adjectives which has separate attributive and predicative forms:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adjective#Types_of_use

ie, "That scene is very graphic", but "That's a nice graphical user interface". German and Russian (and I'm sure many other languages) distinguish between attributive and predicative usage, while English generally doesn't.

</pedant>

Penn

Delirium

robindch wrote: »

I was wondering if someone could give me the gist of this joke?

Really beginning to think I need a college education to appreciate all the jokes in this forum :P:pac:

seamus

koth wrote: »

I was wondering if someone could give me the gist of this joke?

Really beginning to think I need a college education to appreciate all the jokes in this forum :P:pac:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heisenberg_Uncertainty_Principle

Bascially states that there's a fundamental limit on how precise you can be when determining a particle's position (as well as a few other properties), such that all measurements are basically a "closest guess" to the true value.

recedite

Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, probably.

mikhail wrote: »

Capitilisation is a spelling issue

Capitalisation

wonderfulname

Why wouldn't you capitalise the word god when referring to the Christian deity? It's surely the same as with Thor or Harry Potter?

Delirium

robindch

wonderfulname wrote: »

Why wouldn't you capitalise the word god when referring to the Christian deity?

Two main reasons I suspect: (a) the christian deity doesn't have a name like "Thor" and instead, the generic term "god" is used, so it's at least arguable that a non-specific term shouldn't be capitalized (particularly if you bear in mind the vast number of different personalities, and therefore individual deities, which different religious groupings believe exist). But I think it's more likely that (b) the non-religious people who don't capitalize simply enjoy the stuffy reaction from the few religious people who notice.

seamus

wonderfulname wrote: »

Why wouldn't you capitalise the word god when referring to the Christian deity? It's surely the same as with Thor or Harry Potter?

As robin points out, "god" isn't really it's name, more a description of what christians believe it is. Like "lord" or "master". You'll find most references to Yahweh or Jesus are capitalised when atheists mention them.

Aside from the mild fun that can be gained from irritating believers, there's also the point that atheists tend not to draw any distinction between the christian god and the infinite number of other possible gods which one can imagine. So any reference to "god" is a reference to the concept of god rather than any one specific god. Atheists don't lack belief in just the christian god, they lack belief in all gods, so any refutation of an alleged god's acts aren't a refutation just of that specific god, but all gods who might equally have such acts claimed in their name.

The practice of capitalising "god" or "lord" could be considered an artists' priviledge, a stylistic choice and while it's fine within the religious text(s), doing so would be just plain incorrect outside of the Bible.

Just because the Bible does it, does not make it correct: remember, it's just the Bible, it's not gospel (couldn't resist).

robindch

seamus wrote: »

[...] atheists tend not to draw any distinction between the christian god and the infinite number of other possible gods which one can imagine. So any reference to "god" is a reference to the concept of god rather than any one specific god [...]

Worth bearing in mind to that christianity, I believe, was one of the first religions to title its deity with the rather abstract, generic term "god" rather than a specific name like previous deities and religions had.

This seems to make it easier for people to define an abstract relationship suitable for whatever supernatural needs they have, rather than having to acquire the slightly more concrete views that a named deity would suggest. This is further evidenced by items like the weird-seeming protestant obsession with something called a "personal relationship" with the named "Jesus", while the relationships with "god" and the "holy spirit" being far less clearly defined. Essentially, it seems like a rather clever memetic trick to increase the desirability, hence the memetic fitness, of the christian deity.

mikhail

Whether my last post was an effective piece of trolling, or a victim of Muphry's Law, I am saying nothing. Glad to see everyone's on the ball, mind.

FouxDaFaFa

Newsweek's most recent cover looks like this and people are doing a bit of a double-take. NW then asked twitter what they thought of the cover and asked them to discuss using the hashtag #muslimrage

I have never seen a tag turn into such a pisstake so quickly. Some of my favourites:
"I'm having such a good hair day. No-one even knows. #muslimrage"

"What do you mean you don't serve chocolate milk in this pub? #muslimrage"

"The 72 virgins turn out to be all male. #muslimrage"

"BURN ALL WESTERN LITERATURE...onto a zipdrive so I can listen to it while driving. #muslimrage"

Some of the muslims are even making jokes about how they've "hi-jacked" the hashtag. It's gold.

Mickeroo

I always liked Garth Ennis' interpretation of the 72 virgins thing in The Chronicles of Wormwood:



bigger version: http://www.rpgpost.com/uploads/imgs/pre_1314240543__404.jpg

philologos

robindch wrote: »

Worth bearing in mind to that christianity, I believe, was one of the first religions to title its deity with the rather abstract, generic term "god" rather than a specific name like previous deities and religions had.

This seems to make it easier for people to define an abstract relationship suitable for whatever supernatural needs they have, rather than having to acquire the slightly more concrete views that a named deity would suggest. This is further evidenced by items like the weird-seeming protestant obsession with something called a "personal relationship" with the named "Jesus", while the relationships with "god" and the "holy spirit" being far less clearly defined. Essentially, it seems like a rather clever memetic trick to increase the desirability, hence the memetic fitness, of the christian deity.

Prior to Moses and the burning bush in Exodus 3 the name for God that was used amongst the Hebrews was Elohim which is a generic noun for God. So you could say that the Jewish faith had a generic name for God also.

123 LC