BS: Stephen Fry Blasphemy

Subject: RE: BS: Stephen Fry Blasphemy
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 15 May 17 - 09:38 AM

"Are you suggesting that everyone who describes any of those things I listed is lying?"

They are either lying or they are deluded, one or the other, possibly both. That is almost certain. Almost.

Subject: RE: BS: Stephen Fry Blasphemy
From: Greg F.
Date: 15 May 17 - 09:40 AM

We're talking science......

I am not.

Correct, Professsor. You're talking rubbish.

Subject: RE: BS: Stephen Fry Blasphemy
From: Raggytash
Date: 15 May 17 - 09:45 AM

"The problem here is that some wanted to turn an interesting thread on Blasphemy laws into another yet another about religion and the existence of God!"

Would someone care to explain the word Blasphemy to the professor.

OK professor here you go. A dictionary definition of Blasphemy: The action or offence of speaking sacrilegiously about God or sacred things"

If you can separate the two I would be astonished.

Subject: RE: BS: Stephen Fry Blasphemy
From: Raggytash
Date: 15 May 17 - 09:54 AM

Question.

Who decided that a god was beyond the law of nature.

Subject: RE: BS: Stephen Fry Blasphemy
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 15 May 17 - 09:57 AM

Answer: people who wanted God to be beyond scrutiny by rational enquiry. Religious leaders in other words.

Subject: RE: BS: Stephen Fry Blasphemy
From: Stu
Date: 15 May 17 - 10:22 AM

"Science is about the laws of nature.

There isn't anything else though, unless you have faith and don't require EVIDENCE. Which is fine, as long as you don't try to convince everyone else they are wrong.


"If there is a God by definition they do not apply to God."

How convenient. This must also work for ghosts, alien abduction, the yeti, sea serpents, spiritualism, clairvoyance, homeopathy, the flying spaghetti monster etc etc


"They are either lying or they are deluded, one or the other, possibly both. That is almost certain. Almost."

Way too harsh a judgement. People can be mistaken for any number of reasons, seeing explicable phenomena in conditions that they are not used to and leading to misidentification.

Alternatively they might see something they cannot comprehend and don't have the language to describe. If you travelled back in time in a helicopter 4,000 years ago and flew round and round Stonehenge then whizzed back to the present how would the locals have interpreted this? A helicopter is an object that can be explained by science, is subject the laws of physics (agh!) and is totally explicable... but unless you understand something of how it is made, why it flies etc etc. you could never accurately discern it's true nature. To one of our ancestors standing by the bluestones it would appear totally mystifying, so how could this person explain their sighting of a helicopter to their family and friends? They can describe something but will not know what they were looking at all, and are unlikely to come up with the correct explanation at all.

Subject: RE: BS: Stephen Fry Blasphemy
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 15 May 17 - 10:53 AM

put the right lobe in
the right lobe out
in out, in out
shake it all about

Subject: RE: BS: Stephen Fry Blasphemy
From: DMcG
Date: 15 May 17 - 11:10 AM


We're talking science......


If we are, we are on the wrong track because the topic is about law, not science. And odd though it may seem, creating and prosecuting under a blasphemy law does not require a belief in God yourself, whether you or police, cps, barrister or judge.

Or even law maker.

Subject: RE: BS: Stephen Fry Blasphemy
From: Mrrzy
Date: 15 May 17 - 11:25 AM

Keith, you can't ask on the one hand for evidence, and then claim you aren't asking for evidence. You wanted an example of religious idiocy, here you are:

Me: We're talking science

You: I am not.
I was just asked for evidence...What has Science to do with any of this.

Best laugh of the day, so far!

Subject: RE: BS: Stephen Fry Blasphemy
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 15 May 17 - 11:33 AM

I provided numerous examples of religious idiocy and awful ideas outside this thread as well. Those were ignored too, Mrrzy. You are not on your own :-)

Cheers

DtG

Subject: RE: BS: Stephen Fry Blasphemy
From: akenaton
Date: 15 May 17 - 11:34 AM

I know many people with evidence of the existence of God, this evidence convinces them that they are correct to hold a faith.
I have never encountered anyone with evidence that God does not exist.

I have personal evidence which cannot be explained by science, I hesitate to say that it proves the existence of God, but it certainly cannot be explained scientifically.
I am an atheist, so I take some convincing, but others may be more amenable to the possibility.

Subject: RE: BS: Stephen Fry Blasphemy
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 15 May 17 - 11:39 AM

Or faulty HTML, fixed by Catholic Boy, a brave and bold and virtuous (and virginal) young man riding in on the back of a wing-ed seraph...

Failed to notice that earlier - Thanks for the correction and the laugh, Joe :-)

DtG

Subject: RE: BS: Stephen Fry Blasphemy
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 15 May 17 - 11:47 AM

I know many people with evidence of the existence of God

Provide some then. If you do not know the rules for evidence just read back up the thread.

DtG

Subject: RE: BS: Stephen Fry Blasphemy
From: Raggytash
Date: 15 May 17 - 12:05 PM

Evidence for the existence of god .......................

This should be interesting ....................

Come on Ake, I'm all ears.

Subject: RE: BS: Stephen Fry Blasphemy
From: Stu
Date: 15 May 17 - 12:17 PM

"I have never encountered anyone with evidence that God does not exist."

That's because if a person says god exists, it's up to them to supply the evidence, not the person who disagrees. Science can't prove god doesn't exist (if it wanted too, I can't see the point myself), but perhaps one day could prove she does. It's typical of human arrogance to think we have all the answers, or ever will have*.

If we need external validation to prove god exists or not then our faith must be rather brittle and we're getting the wrong end of the stick. It shouldn't matter what anyone else believes, let them get on with it as long as they're not hurting anyone.

This is why the whole blasphemy business with Fry was overblown; to his mind it simply isn't blasphemy as he doesn't believe in god. Am I to get the hump every time I see the pope or a vicar on TV because I eschew Abrahamic religion?


"I have personal evidence which cannot be explained by science"

I guess we all might have in our own mind, but don't expect anyone to take our word that it's anything more than our own personal experience. If we want to convince people otherwise, then we have to supply that evidence.



*I'm willing to concede I might be very wrong about all this, and when I keff it I will be hauled up before St. Peter who will then tell me that despite trying to be a good person to be informed my lack of faith has condemned me to eternal damnation and devils sticking forks up me arse. I'll ask for a word with God before I take the elevator down because if no-one here will answer the questions about suffering etc, I'd like to ask him myself. If I have got it wrong though, I hope I find my way to Valhalla, to drink in those mighty halls!

Subject: RE: BS: Stephen Fry Blasphemy
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 15 May 17 - 12:21 PM

Well, Stu, deluded, mistaken, taken in, hoodwinked, tricked, bamboozled, confused, take yer pick. A helicopter to the ancients would be a mystifying and terrifying object. But they could be brave and touch it, hear it make a noise, feel the wind from the blades, see it set off and land and even speak to the chap flying it. You can't do any of that earthly, normal stuff with a ghost, a moving virgin or an invisible God. So if you embrace such phenomena as true, you're a bit daft, aren't you?

Subject: RE: BS: Stephen Fry Blasphemy
From: DMcG
Date: 15 May 17 - 01:05 PM

As I understand it, Stu, the rules and regulations for Valhalla require you to die in battle. Did you have an opponent in mind?

Subject: RE: BS: Stephen Fry Blasphemy
From: Donuel
Date: 15 May 17 - 02:50 PM

Ever notice that helicopter blades look like wheels within wheels.

Everyone has a view about time which fails the smell test.

You only think you know time.

I chide Steve specifically because I know he has the maturity to think in stride or chew gum and walk. ;) He too thinks he knows how time works. I bet he knows Newtonian gravity by formula. He only knows what it is to him.
Now suppose I speak to all of you at once;
I put it to you that your idea of time and other phenomena is an illusion. You think you are right for the right reasons but that too is flawed. All the arguments you rely upon will ultimately fool you.
You are not a fool but a Maxwell or Einstein you are not.

Based on what you know, you are in good company but we all do not know enough to claim certainty beyond any exceptions. It is the exception to the rule that moves discovery and knowledge forward.

I believe you all. You haven't a ken to everything I am suggesting,
you only can think what I mean from your own experience. None of us will experience everything. Certainty is your enemy, uncertainty is your friend.

Subject: RE: BS: Stephen Fry Blasphemy
From: bobad
Date: 15 May 17 - 05:13 PM

Man is the most insane species. He worships an invisible God and destroys a visible Nature, unaware that this Nature he's destroying is this God he's worshiping.

- Hubert Reeves

Subject: RE: BS: Stephen Fry Blasphemy
From: Donuel
Date: 15 May 17 - 05:20 PM

Once upon a Monday dreary
pondering the forum's hearsay
there came a bumping
a thumping on my front porch door
What the hell is that I implore
Prob'ly some salesman for the roof
I swung the door open Whoosh...
Huge sad eyes seemed to say to me.
quote the philosophy cow, "moot"

Subject: RE: BS: Stephen Fry Blasphemy
From: Mrrzy
Date: 15 May 17 - 06:47 PM

Ha ha ha ha ha! The philosophy cow meets the interrupting cow!

Subject: RE: BS: Stephen Fry Blasphemy
From: Mrrzy
Date: 15 May 17 - 08:28 PM

Oh, yeah, back to the thread: New Zealand is scrapping its blasphemy laws in the wake of all this... (blicky.)

Subject: RE: BS: Stephen Fry Blasphemy
From: Donuel
Date: 15 May 17 - 08:44 PM

This will have a better conclusion for Steven Fry than in his movie V is for Vendetta.

Subject: RE: BS: Stephen Fry Blasphemy
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 15 May 17 - 09:27 PM

Your uncertainty principle chimes with me, Donuel.

To revisit this, suitably stung by Stu's rebuke:

"To one of our ancestors standing by the bluestones it would appear totally mystifying, so how could this person explain their sighting of a helicopter to their family and friends? They can describe something but will not know what they were looking at all, and are unlikely to come up with the correct explanation at all."

Unfortunately, humans seem to suffer from a particular drawback of having such fine imaginations, that they are quite likely to come with an incorrect explanation. A really rational Stonehenge fellow might have worked at least something out about the helicopter. He might have seen an ash key taking much longer to reach the ground due to the rotation on its falling. Had he helped to trundle the bluestones from Preseli he might have articulated in his mind a connection between locomotion and the noise it generates. Feeling the wind from the blades he might have even realised that air was being pushed away and that that had something to do with the lift. After all, he'd seen plenty of birds in flight and seen the wing-energy they have to put in. He might even have felt the draught from a bird's wings as it passed him close. All that sounds a bit hard for our Druidic fellow, and it still wouldn't get him close to bearings, universal joints, compression and internal combustion. So, like the rest of us, he might have been inclined, had his rationality deserted him, to reach for a simpler, one-step explanation, that the flying monster had been sent by the gods to frighten him. I see a parallel there with the way that many people of faith will avoid the complexities of really trying to study all the facets of nature in order to get closer to the truth, settling instead for the most abject pseudo-explanation of all, that it was all just put there by God. That's all so easy but it's also an abysmal dereliction of intellect and it renders us vulnerable to exploitation and control. If a God really has made us to be so intelligent, he'd be a bit cross about that.

Subject: RE: BS: Stephen Fry Blasphemy
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 16 May 17 - 02:55 AM

No se puede creer!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Stephen Fry Blasphemy
From: Monique
Date: 16 May 17 - 02:58 AM

I wonder how the Stonehenge guy would have explained radioactivity that noone can see, hear, smell...

Subject: RE: BS: Stephen Fry Blasphemy
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 16 May 17 - 03:45 AM

If you want to discuss God, real or hypothetical, you have to get the concept straight.
A being limited and restricted by the laws of science is not god-like.
By definition a god is outside of and transcending the laws of science, and has control over them.
So forget science.

Likewise evidence. Testimony about a person's own personal experience is evidence. There may be more than one explanation of it (eg perjury Steve) but it is evidence. "The evidence I shall give..."

Denying those simple facts, or saying they gave you "the biggest laugh of the day" just puts the joke on you.

I am not and would not try to prove the existence of God, just responding to the claim of "no evidence."

There is lots, and I have just thought of some scientific evidence.
Not proof. There are alternative explanations, but evidence it is.

1. The Anthropocentric Theory of the Universe. Look it up.

2. Life on Earth.
All known life forms have one single common ancestor. There is no evidence for more than one, single, "miraculous" act of creation, and human science has so far failed to replicate what is supposed to have happened spontaneously by accident!

Likewise the creation of the first complex cell, leading to complex, multicellular organisms.
There is no evidence for more than one, single, "miraculous" event, and human science has so far failed to replicate what is supposed to have happened spontaneously by accident!

Spooky, as Einstein said about another aspect of science.

Subject: RE: BS: Stephen Fry Blasphemy
From: Donuel
Date: 16 May 17 - 07:39 AM

Heil Heisenberg

My god pov is about our brain individually and collectively, made from the universe that it is made for, to sense some of the sea we live in.

Ancient Architecture is the obvious remainder from a venture into a desire for perfection. Perfection is often coupled with a god notion but not always. Hindu temples and roman villas with mosaics are different yet amazing. Likewise the god notion was not always the motivation for the music of Bach.

Many easily accept the notion the Earth has a consciousness. The idea the Universe has a consciousness is heresy to some but seems no be a natural out growth of information.

Subject: RE: BS: Stephen Fry Blasphemy
From: Stu
Date: 16 May 17 - 07:46 AM

"So, like the rest of us, he might have been inclined, had his rationality deserted him,"

Rationality has nothing to do with it. The culture they are part of don't see the world the way we do; they have no frame of reference to help them understand that a mechanism as complex as a helicopter could exist, let alone be explicable by our science, that is impossibly complex for them to imagine. They could never conceive that folk could build such a thing (were you to sit one of these folk down and explain how it works or bring them back and show them how it's made they might get it as they were intelligent people, but without that explanation they would struggle). The people who built Stonehenge understood the motion of the stars and planets but did they actually understand the true nature of a star or the size and age of the universe? Did they understand the solar wind, magnetic fields, structure of the galaxy, nuclear reactions, gamma rays, x-rays, photons etc?

As humans we struggle with the idea of something being unknowable and seek to explain everything we perceive one way or another; it's why science works hard to avoid bias and a priori assumption. When people think they've seen a ghost they might not be stupid or lying, but might be explaining what they saw in the only terms they know how.

Subject: RE: BS: Stephen Fry Blasphemy
From: Mrrzy
Date: 16 May 17 - 07:58 AM

If those are the only terms they know then they are, by definition, ignorant. Might not be their fault, but it is definitely ignorance.

Subject: RE: BS: Stephen Fry Blasphemy
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 16 May 17 - 08:05 AM

the thing about God.

on some he showers his blessings.

the rest of us. he can't really decide whether to bite us in the bum or on the balls.

why did he plant so many ukuleles in the world, and then make it so hard to play?

God is a conundrum in his pyjamas, eating a choc ice.

Subject: RE: BS: Stephen Fry Blasphemy
From: Stu
Date: 16 May 17 - 08:09 AM

Mrrzy: Ignorant relative to what? Our standards now? Their standards 4,000ya? Is an Amazonian Indian that knows the use of every species of plant in his forest ignorant because he can't work a smartphone?

Subject: RE: BS: Stephen Fry Blasphemy
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 16 May 17 - 08:23 AM

Rationality has everything to do with it. Faced with complexity and unfamiliar phenomena, there are two options. You can try to make sense of what's in front of you using all your amassed powers of reasoning, your experience and your knowledge, accepting that you'll never crack every puzzle confronting you, but deciding that that will merely spur you on to further enthusiastic enquiry. A very tough but delicious road ahead. You should know, Stu. You're a scientist. Or you can take the easy path and settle on pseudo-explanations involving magic and impossible deities, notions probably constructed by someone else, maybe your tribal or religious leaders, who have their motives. That's the path of irrationality. That won't strain your mind like science does. If we're here for any reason, we're here in order to strain our minds.

Subject: RE: BS: Stephen Fry Blasphemy
From: Donuel
Date: 16 May 17 - 09:26 AM

Big AL
I always thought the lowly ukulele is the easiest of all instruments.
Maybe yours needs a serious set up and adjustment. If that's not the problem it is perfectly fine to blame god.

I am in year 2 of the ukelele. I think I have it half mastered and will for the rest of my life.

Subject: RE: BS: Stephen Fry Blasphemy
From: Stu
Date: 16 May 17 - 09:46 AM

I'm being clumsy in the way I'm putting my point across, I think we're talking at cross purposes. I don't disagree with anything you say Steve, but:

"You can try to make sense of what's in front of you using all your amassed powers of reasoning, your experience and your knowledge"

All I'm saying is not everyone has the same experience or knowledge that enables them to decide in the same way as you or I might. There are variations of understanding within a local population, then variations in understanding informed by worldview in different cultures. I don't think all folk who have faith or believe in the supernatural are wrong, liars or idiots (these occur everywhere in every society), I think some people have a different viewpoint altogether.

It's obvious also that even amongst as small group such as us here we have different definitions of what constitutes evidence. For a scientist evidence is empirical and observable and can be subject to be checks and verification, for a ghost-hunter it's what someone said they saw and that's enough. I think the ghost-hunter is very wrong, but it's also quite possible I'm wrong. However, in my opinion the scientific method is the best way we have of discovering empirical truth as we define it in our society. Out in the Amazon, I'm sure they think I'm deluded or stupid.

Subject: RE: BS: Stephen Fry Blasphemy
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 16 May 17 - 09:56 AM

In a science fiction book I read many years ago they referred to a particular cult who kept their hair long for religious reasons. Those reasons had been lost in time but the reader is told it is because their god had, millennia ago, told them to not let anyone mess with their heads.

On a re-creation of Iron Age culture that was on TV a good while back they discovered why Iron Age round huts had troughs across the doorways. Some had assumed it was to keep out the water. Others postulated it had some spiritual significance. The actual reason was that the free range chickens did it searching for food while sheltering.

Different experience and knowledge indeed, Stu. the only thing I am absolutely certain of is that I know far too little!

:D tG

Subject: RE: BS: Stephen Fry Blasphemy
From: Donuel
Date: 16 May 17 - 10:26 AM

Dave you know 10 to the 5th more than Trump, 10 to the 4 more than his wife, 10 to the 3 more than me, 10 to the 2 more than you think and 10 times more than Alfred E Neuman.

Subject: RE: BS: Stephen Fry Blasphemy
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 16 May 17 - 11:05 AM

"All I'm saying is not everyone has the same experience or knowledge that enables them to decide in the same way as you or I might. There are variations of understanding within a local population, then variations in understanding informed by worldview in different cultures."

Science began when a human, or a pre-human even, first looked up at the moon and stars and decided to take the tough path of trying to work out what he was really seeing. Some of his mates who lived just down the cursor from him saw the same thing but took the easy path, assuming that they were seeing magic beyond all understanding. They probably had a better time down the Capstone And Chisel that evening, playing their bone flutes and their bone bones, then went home, having stopped off to sacrifice a goat or two in awe of the magician-in-the-sky, to scare the wife and kids before gorging on roast sabre-tooth. Yer man would have sat out for longer on top of the dolmen, heavily-boned brow furrowed, seeing how the moon and stars had moved since he last looked, which got him thinking even more...the first scientists were geniuses who didn't need understanding but who saw the need to develop understanding. They were the heroes who wanted to get at the magic of the real truth. I should think they were in a minority, but, without them, we wouldn't be here today. Down the centuries, they've been up against quite a lot, as Galileo and Darwin would tell you (I was at Galileo's grand tomb last week in Florence, by the way, in Santa Croce basilica. Something ironic about that honour accorded him by the Catholics, I thought...)

We haven't changed much, have we?

I don't think that people who believe in the supernatural are liars or idiots, but I do think they are almost certainly wrong.

Subject: RE: BS: Stephen Fry Blasphemy
From: keberoxu
Date: 16 May 17 - 12:21 PM

ermm ... interrupting cow ? ! say what?

Subject: RE: BS: Stephen Fry Blasphemy
From: robomatic
Date: 16 May 17 - 02:44 PM

I like that line given to Gene Kelly in "Inherit the Wind":

"Darwin was wrong. Man's STILL an ape!"

Subject: RE: BS: Stephen Fry Blasphemy
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 16 May 17 - 03:27 PM

i only took up the uke this year - it sounds awful.

George Formby is god.

Subject: RE: BS: Stephen Fry Blasphemy
From: Donuel
Date: 16 May 17 - 04:22 PM

I got a baritone uke with two metal martin stings on the bottom and nylon on top. Once the buzzing went away after year one it got better with pure tone and vibrato. I do classical, film scores, folk, slow jazz and old pop but only as a solo instrument. But if you ever played guitar, which I never did, I bet you can still accompany and finger pick.
Oh, I go with tuning in 5ths, like a deep mandolin.


PS I'll be Spencer Tracy and Ake can be the prosecutor.

Subject: RE: BS: Stephen Fry Blasphemy
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 16 May 17 - 04:34 PM

well i fell in love with a tenor uke that i saw in music shop. then i got a baritone and to be like everyone else a soprano one - both off the net for about thirty quid.

my ambition is to kick some ceildh band up the ass with a few formbyesque flourishes.

however easier said than done. i can't say the almighty is really pulling his weight on this one.

Subject: RE: BS: Stephen Fry Blasphemy
From: Donuel
Date: 16 May 17 - 07:58 PM

George Formby song writer for Herman's Hermits ;^)

His syncopation is superb.

Subject: RE: BS: Stephen Fry Blasphemy
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 16 May 17 - 10:18 PM

yeh a imagine a drum machine or a computer programme that could deal with those sort of tempo changes - same is true of the way Lightnin Hopkins plays guitar - that's where modern music has gone wrong, wrong , wrong....!

Subject: RE: BS: Stephen Fry Blasphemy
From: Mrrzy
Date: 16 May 17 - 10:40 PM

Stu, ignorant = without knowledge. It is not a value judgment, it is a description. Your plant-knowledgeable example may well be ignorant of smartphones, but they might not. I have a doctorate in my field and *I*'m ignorant when it comes to smart phones. In fact, today I had to call the sales people to ask how to not answer the phone, I kid you not, because I kept sending a robot to voicemail.

In my experience, Americans who went to public schools tend to be extremely ignorant.

The people who marched with torches through my town are uncivilized *and* likely also ignorant, but I won't use ignorant as an insult for them for being bigoted assholes.

Subject: RE: BS: Stephen Fry Blasphemy
From: Mrrzy
Date: 16 May 17 - 10:44 PM

Also, I never realized that was Gene Kelly in Inherit the Wind, and I've seen that movie dozens of times.

Subject: RE: BS: Stephen Fry Blasphemy
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 18 May 17 - 05:11 AM

I don't know about evidence of the non existence of God, but wouldn't you think Auschwitz was a pretty convincing argument of the non existence of a God of Love?

I think maybe it was along those lines Frost was thinking - and i imagine that's a pretty common thought.

i have heard theories about being in a state of grace because of suffering. However when I think of the early days of Denise's disease, when she suffered terribly, I could see nothing ennobling in suffering.

You have to remember that the people who thought up these theories and thoughts were living in days before famine relief, modern medicine, even modern armaments with which to defend themselves from cruel enemies.

It was people like this who wrote the Book of Job, where Job asks God what have I done to offend thee? they had to make sense of the suffering life confronted them with.

The truth is that then as now, it made and makes no sense.

And the corollary of this is that we should try and be nice to each other - whatever the provocation.

Subject: RE: BS: Stephen Fry Blasphemy
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 18 May 17 - 05:18 AM

The issue of suffering is a problem that all Christians must wrestle with.
I would be suspicious of any who claim never to have doubts.

Auschwitz was a human crime. Christians believe God gave us free will instead of making us puppets.
Crimes like Auschwitz are a consequence.

Subject: RE: BS: Stephen Fry Blasphemy
From: Joe Offer
Date: 18 May 17 - 05:26 AM

I think it was people who created Auschwitz, Al, not God. But I think Auschwitz is proof that God doesn't write the script of our lives. As for Job, the book does a good job of exploring suffering, but doesn't give many answers. It does refute the idea that our suffering is punishment for our own wrongdoing.
Joe