Flying spagetti, teapots, pink unicorns and fairies??

pts

darjeeling wrote: »

Ah, naughty, upstart little scientology - the conjurer who won't stop showing everyone how the trick is done. :pac:

It can be joked about, but I think there is a lot of truth in that statement. I always thought of Scientology as a mutation of a reasonably successful virus. However to be able to compete with other viruses and to survive it needs to take what works for the other viruses, but distil it into an even more extreme example of said viruses traits. A down side of this though is that it may be successful initially but has the unfortunate side effect of killing of the host before it can get the most out of it.

darjeeling

Re: invisible teapots - an aside.

As definitions of theism*, my dictionary offers:

1: belief in the existence of God with or without a belief in a special revelation
2: a morbid state resulting from too much tea-drinking

Was Russell making a dry little academic joke?

* your etymology may vary.

pH

To be fair the Teapot thing is covered above, but the the Invisible Pink Unicorn came from satirising contradicting features of a deity, though usage has moved from the original to something more like the teapot.

Same with the FSM, it originated as a response to the leaving "open" a designer when the Kansas state school board introduced Intelligent Design, though as with the IPU its common usage today is more akin to the teapot.

The Mad Hatter

darjeeling wrote: »

Re: invisible teapots - an aside.

As definitions of theism*, my dictionary offers:

1: belief in the existence of God with or without a belief in a special revelation
2: a morbid state resulting from too much tea-drinking

Was Russell making a dry little academic joke?

* your etymology may vary.

Pfft - there's no such thing as too much tea. (And yes, I'm frantically wiki-ing as I write this.)

tech77

Tim Robbins wrote: »

It's also an argument against agnosticism i.e. you can't really proove something doesn't exist but you certainly believe other things without evidence don't exist.

The only good counter argument to it I can think of is that the objects used in the examples, human have constructed from constructs they have some evidence for.

1. Flying teapot - evidence of flying, evidence of teapot.
2. Pink Unicorn - evidence of Pink, no evidence of unicorn but a clear understanding what it is.

So the examples are to some extent within the grasp of human intelligence and human understanding and so humans can be confident making assertions of their non existence.

Whereas if God is not fully within the grasp of human intelligence it's different. We might say it's highly improbably a flying teapot exists because we fully know what a flying teapot would be so we can make arguments and reasonable assertions why it wouldn't exist.

It's more difficult to say God does not exist because we perhaps do not have the intelligence to know what / who God is.

The problem with this counter argument, it also argues against a religious viewpoint that claims to know exactly who / what God is.

I think this is very true- the unknowability of God.
Applying equally to theists and atheists perhaps.

tech77

Isn't this just about not believing in possibilities.

I mean why is it so hard to believe that an FSM exists somewhere in the universe/outside the universe (if that's even possible).

Is it that infinite possibility isn't a feasible concept?

And if it is, surely then an FSM exists.

Even in a universe without infinite possibility-
It's still conceivable tbh.

But again there's just an arrogance about applying our very basic intelligence/scientific knowledge to the (infinitely possible?) unknown/unknowable.

Is it such a stretch to envisaging the possibility of a (gluten?) pasta-based life form or a teapot orbiting a star somewhere.

OK i admit this is facetious, but it's just the dismissal of the unknown (despite how ridiculous/improbableit might be) that just gets to me.

Incidentally, does this analogy mean that if an FSM was discovered tomorrow, would atheism have to reevaluate its attitudes to the whole notion of possibility in the context of the unknown.

neilled

LZ5by5 wrote: »

Flying spaghetti monster seems to be the most regular one. Who came up with that one? Dawkins was it?

You are of course referring to his (peace be upon his noodly appendages) prophet, Bobby Henderson, whom the truth was revealed to???? :pac::pac::pac: