1. Fleabytes

Comment #145459 by FSMTeapot on March 17, 2008 at 3:43 pm

are you really espousing that heretical nonsense about beeing just as important as an owl or a cockroach? By the same extension - and cant you see it? - a human is as disposable as a plastic bag? This line of thinkking goe's striaight to Auschwitzz!

2. Fleabytes

Comment #145411 by FSMTeapot on March 17, 2008 at 2:43 pm

"even Einstein: what did they do? Unleesh destruction on the CHRISTIAN world!
Atom bomb's and depravity and faggotism and lessbianism and comunism. The legacy of ATHEIST'S. Thank's, guys."

Reminds me of this:

"...

And what's the point of Albert Einstein
What do we need Physics for?
Heresy's his inspiration
Corrupt and rotten to the core
Curse his devious mathematics
Curse his deadly atom war

Shakespeare, Isaac Newton
Small ideas for little boys
Adding to the senseless chatter
Adding to the background noise
Hard to hear my oratory
Hard to hear my inner voice

Van Gogh, Botticelli
Scraping paint onto a board
Colour is the fuel of madness
That's no way to praise the Lord
Grey's the colour of the pious
Knelt upon the misericord

I'm familiar with the cover
I don't need to read the book
I police the world of action
Inside's where I never look
Got no time to help the worthless
Lotus-eaters, Mandarins, crooks

There's a message on the wind
Calling me to glory somewhere
There are signs too deep for the dumb
Like perfume in the air
And when I get to Heaven
I won't realise I'm there"

3. New Atheists Are Not Great

Comment #145205 by FSMTeapot on March 17, 2008 at 11:11 am

"No other religion dares claim that God walked among us as fully human. None describes the Lord as a servant rather than overlord. None contemplates an Almighty who humbly offers the bread and cup of love or gives his children complete freedom to grasp his outstretched hand or slap it away."

Aren't there precursors to all these ideas in Greek and Norse Myths and other ancient mythologies? In Norse myths the gods are technically mortal, and spend an awful lot of time as beggars and the like in people's houses.

4. Fleabytes

Comment #130958 by FSMTeapot on February 21, 2008 at 2:55 pm

"I may have to change it as we already have FSM Teapot with "anthill inside""

Please don't feel obliged to do that. You were here first I believe, and in any case mine is a Pratchett reference, with nothing to do with atheism. I can probably change it for something else if you feel they could get muddled.

5. Fleabytes

Comment #130469 by FSMTeapot on February 20, 2008 at 3:38 pm

Oh dear: I have a friend at college who was reading the Wilson book. He hasn't read anything by Dawkins, except once while browsing in Waterstones, and he was already making comments on what Dawkins was saying in TGD and The Blind Watchmaker simply on what he had been told in church. What he must think now...

Dammit! I spent two and a half years of R.E. lessons showing him that a) there is overwhelming evidence for evolution and b) that many people don't feel their faith threatened by it.

I let it drop after that because he'd finally conceeded a few points and I was beginning to sound like a looping tape. He's now regressed to a fully-fledged Young-Earther, and has started reading all these flea books in a sort of book club with a friend of similar vein. He never will read The God Delusion.

He showed me the Wilson book, and I opened it at random on that table thing. The whole thing really does read like some hastily scribbled notes rather than a published book. It's as if he went through The God Delusion, jotting down his immediate reactions on the back of an envelope, meaning to actually write them up, and then just thought "Awh, screw it! That'll do."

6. Fleabytes

Comment #129920 by FSMTeapot on February 19, 2008 at 6:44 pm

"As narcissism goes, it probably compares favourably with masquerading as an angel."

Hehe.

That was EPIC Paula. Thank you for doing what I would never have been able to drag myself through. How you could stand that much McGrath I will never know. Throughout his writing you can just hear that grating voice that makes you want to rip your inner ears out of your head. Strange how his attitude changes when he can't hide behind the text, and actually debates Dawkins or Hitchens.

7. Debate between Richard Dawkins and Madeline Bunting

Comment #126950 by FSMTeapot on February 14, 2008 at 2:46 pm

Madeline's tactics seemed very similar to me to numerous other people I've talked to. When challenged on a specific point, they cloud the issue with nothings and misty arguments, which you have to clear before you can get to the point, and this allows them to hide behind using a nebulous question (i.e. "emotional truth") and say "I don't know, and I assume you don't either, so this shows the issue to be far more complex then you think". No. They are making it far more complex than it needs to be.

I also detected just a hint of sarcasm whenever she couldn't actually answer something: trying to suggest it was too obvious to need it.