October 2017 – Page 40 – TrueFreeThinker

quotes

Devil in Augustine of Hippo, part 6

Herein we continue, from part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, considering info on the Devil in Augustine of Hippo (354-430 AD). The fuller complete result consists of quotations of those sections within the text that refer to Angels, Cherubim, Seraphim, Devil, Satan, demons, serpent and dragon. The point is not to elucidate these references but to provide relevant partial quotations and citations. See my section on Angels here, Cherubim and Seraphim here, Satan here and Demons here.

Devil in Augustine of Hippo’s The City of God, Books XXI-XXII.

Book XXI
Chapter 1 I Propose, with such ability as God may grant me, to discuss in this book more thoroughly the nature of the punishment which shall be assigned to the devil and all his retainers, when the two cities, the one of God, the other of the devil, shall have reached their proper ends through Jesus Christ our Lord, the Judge of quick and dead. And I have adopted this order, and preferred to speak, first of the punishment of the devils

Chapter 3 But, say they, there is no body which can suffer and cannot also die. How do we know this? For who can say with certainty that the devils do not suffer in their bodies, when they own that they are grievously tormented?

Chapter 6 For to this inextinguishable lamp we add a host of marvels wrought by men, or by magic — that is, by men under the influence of devils, or by the devils directly—for such marvels we cannot deny without impugning the truth of the sacred Scriptures we believe. That lamp, therefore, was either by some mechanical and human device fitted with asbestos, or it was arranged by magical art in order that the worshippers might be astonished, or some devil under the name of Venus so signally manifested himself that this prodigy both began and became permanent. Now devils are attracted to dwell in certain temples by means of the creatures (God’s creatures, not theirs), who present to them what suits their various tastes.
They are attracted not by food like animals, but, like spirits, by such symbols as suit their taste, various kinds of stones, woods, plants, animals, songs, rites. And that men may provide these attractions, the devils first of all cunningly seduce them, either by imbuing their hearts with a secret poison, or by revealing themselves under a friendly guise, and thus make a few of them their disciples, who become the instructors of the multitude…And yet these very deeds forward my present arguments. For if such marvels are wrought by unclean devils, how much mightier are the holy Angels! And what can not that God do who made the Angels themselves capable of working miracles!…by the help of magicians, whom Scripture calls sorcerers and enchanters, the devils could gain such power that the noble poet Virgil should consider himself justified in describing a very powerful magician.

Chapter 10 For it is undoubtedly the same fire which is to serve for the punishment of men and of devils, according to the words of Christ: “Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his Angels;” unless, perhaps, as learned men have thought, the devils have a kind of body made of that dense and humid air which we feel strikes us when the wind is blowing…But if any one maintains that the devils have no bodies, this is not a matter either to be laboriously investigated, or to be debated with keenness…
Therefore, though the devils have no bodies, yet their spirits, that is, the devils themselves, shall be brought into thorough contact with the material fires, to be tormented by them; not that the fires themselves with which they are brought into contact shall be animated by their connection with these spirits, and become animals composed of body and spirit…But that hell, which also is called a lake of fire and brimstone, will be material fire, and will torment the bodies of the damned, whether men or devils,— the solid bodies of the one, aerial bodies of the others; or if only men have bodies as well as souls, yet the evil spirits, though without bodies, shall be so connected with the bodily fires as to receive pain without imparting life. One fire certainly shall be the lot of both, for thus the truth has declared.

Chapter 16 Whoever, therefore, desires to escape eternal punishment, let him not only be baptized, but also justified in Christ, and so let him in truth pass from the devil to Christ.

Chapter 17 Origen was even more indulgent; for he believed that even the devil himself and his Angels, after suffering those more severe and prolonged pains which their sins deserved, should be delivered from their torments, and associated with the holy Angels…And yet they dare not extend their pity further, and propose the deliverance of the devil himself.

Chapter 18 And yet they who hold this opinion do not extend it to the acquittal or liberation of the devil and his Angels. Their human tenderness is moved only towards men, and they plead chiefly their own cause, holding out false hopes of impunity to their own depraved lives by means of this quasi compassion of God to the whole race. Consequently they who promise this impunity even to the prince of the devils and his satellites make a still fuller exhibition of the mercy of God.

Chapter 23 First of all, it behooves us to inquire and to recognize why the Church has not been able to tolerate the idea that promises cleansing or indulgence to the devil even after the most severe and protracted punishment…“Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his Angels.” “Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his Angels”…And therefore no other reason, no reason more obvious and just, can be found for holding it as the fixed and immovable belief of the truest piety, that the devil and his Angels shall never return to the justice and life of the saints, than that Scripture, which deceives no man, says that God spared them not, and that they were condemned beforehand by Him, and cast into prisons of darkness in hell, being reserved to the judgment of the last day, when eternal fire shall receive them, in which they shall be tormented world without end…How can this be believed without enervating our faith in the eternal punishment of the devils? For if all or some of those to whom it shall be said, “Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his Angels,” are not to be always in that fire, then what reason is there for believing that the devil and his Angels shall always be there?

Chapter 24 Otherwise there is no reason why the Church should not even now pray for the devil and his Angels, since God her Master has ordered her to pray for her enemies…For what does she especially beg for them but that “God would grant them repentance,” as the apostle says, “that they may return to soberness out of the snare of the devil, by whom they are held captive according to his will?”. But if the Church were certified who those are, who, though they are still abiding in this life, are yet predestinated to go with the devil into eternal fire, then for them she could no more pray than for him…But when the Judge of quick and dead has said, “Come, you blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world,” and to those on the other side, “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire, which is prepared for the devil and his Angels,” and “These shall go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life,” it were excessively presumptuous to say that the punishment of any of those whom God has said shall go away into eternal punishment shall not be eternal, and so bring either despair or doubt upon the corresponding promise of life eternal.

Chapter 25 But let us now reply to those who promise deliverance from eternal fire, not to the devil and his Angels (as neither do they of whom we have been speaking), nor even to all men whatever, but only to those who have been washed by the baptism of Christ, and have become partakers of His body and blood, no matter how they have lived, no matter what heresy or impiety they have fallen into.

Book XXII
Chapter 8 A gouty doctor of the same city, when he had given in his name for baptism, and had been prohibited the day before his baptism from being baptized that year, by black woolly-haired boys who appeared to him in his dreams, and whom he understood to be devils…Thither a young man was carried, who, when he was watering his horse one summer day at noon in a pool of a river, had been taken possession of by a devil…At this sound the young man, as if electrified, was thoroughly aroused, and with frightful screaming seized the altar, and held it as if he did not dare or were not able to let it go, and as if he were fixed or tied to it; and the devil in him, with loud lamentation, besought that he might be spared, and confessed where and when and how he took possession of the youth…But his sister’s husband, who had brought him there, said, “God, who has banished the devil, is able to restore his eye at the prayers of His saints”…I know that a young woman of Hippo was immediately dispossessed of a devil, on anointing herself with oil, mixed with the tears of the prebsyter who had been praying for her.

Chapter 24 For in condemning it He did not withdraw all that He had given it, else it had been annihilated; neither did He, in penally subjecting it to the devil, remove it beyond His own power; for not even the devil himself is outside of God’s government, since the devil’s nature subsists only by the supreme Creator who gives being to all that in any form exists.

In the next segment, we will consider more on the Devil in Augustine of Hippo.

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KKK Ku Klux Klan

Redline

Atheist evolutionist Michael Ruse – morality as Darwinian survival mechanism

Herein, we continue, from part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, considering a discussion between Gary Gutting (professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame) and Michael Ruse (philosopher of science who specializes in the philosophy of biology of Florida State University) that was published as “Does Evolution Explain Religious Beliefs?,” New York Times, July 8, 2014 AD

GARY GUTTING: Is one of religion’s merits that it provides a foundation (intellectual and practical) for morality through the idea of God as divine lawgiver?

MICHAEL RUSE: I am on record as an “evolutionary skeptic.” I don’t deny substantive morality — you ought to return your library books on time — but I do deny objective foundations. I think morality is a collective illusion, genetic in origin, that makes us good cooperators. And I would add that being good cooperators makes each one of us individually better off in the struggle for existence.
If we are nice to other people, they are much more likely to be nice to us in return. However, as the philosopher J.L. Mackie used to argue, I think we “objectify” substantive ethics — we think it objectively the case that we ought return library books on time. But we do this (or rather our genes make us do this) because if we didn’t we would all start to cheat and substantive ethics would collapse to the ground.

So I don’t buy the moral argument for the existence of God. I think you can have all of the morality you need without God. I am a follower of Hume brought up to date by Darwin. Morality is purely emotions, although emotions of a special kind with an important adaptive function. I don’t, however, think that here I am necessarily denying the existence of God.

Were I a Christian, I would be somewhat of a natural law theorist, thinking that morality is what is natural. Caring about small children is natural and good; killing small children for laughs is unnatural and bad. If you want to say that God created the world and what is good therefore is what fits with the way God designed it, I am O.K. with this. In fact, I think you should say it to avoid the problem (raised in Plato’s “Euthyphro”) of simply making the good a function of God’s arbitrary will.

The reason that one of religion’s merits is that it provides a foundation for morality is that as per Atheistic evolution; morality is a Darwinian survival mechanism. This means that if it is advantageous to love one’s neighbor then that is moral but if it is advantageous to eat one’s neighbor then that is moral.
Morality is, on this view, what morality does and the zeitgeist is ever shifting into a poltergeist. What was moral yesteryear could be immoral today and visa versa. Therefore, Atheistic evolution discredits moral condemnation as one cannot condemn yesterday’s actions based on today’s morals. In fact, can we even be justified in condemning today’s actions based on today’s morality? After all, for all we know, even at this very moment morality is shifting.

In the previous segment, Ruse was quoted to the effect that he is “an ardent Darwinian evolutionist” but he is also an “evolutionary skeptic”—go figure. Well, I am an ardent Darwinian evolution skeptic.

Note that on Ruse’s view genes are omnipotent as they “make us” do things. The technical fact is that while within our common parlance the terms are used interchangeably: there is a difference between morals and ethics. Morality refers to the mores which are mere descriptions of that which people do; whatever it is that they are doing. Thus, morals are relative, subjective, intrinsic and tentative.

Ethics refers to the ethos which are prescriptions of that which people should or ought to do;. Thus, ethics are objective, extrinsic and absolute (some refer to this concept as absolute morals or universal morals—see attached video for details and examples of this).

The result of Michael Ruse’s claim is that morality is, ultimately, selfishness. Our genes make us moral because “being good cooperators makes each one of us individually better off.” For a related issue, see Karma and pop-occulture.

Now, if morality is merely a Darwinian survival mechanism, of course, “you can have all of the morality you need without God” since, in that case, morality is as noted above.

As for “morality is what is natural” just what is natural? Cooperation with one’s own kind or species (whatever that is) or family or tribe or clan or city or state or country or continent but brutally murdering outsiders for food and other resources?
Why is it “killing small children for laughs” something that is “unnatural and bad”? If resources are low and population high then, why not? In fact, within first would countries (and others) murdering small children, babies in the womb, for convenience is viewed as perfectly moral. And what is someone (or, an entire culture) murders small children for laughs? What of it? Unless a stronger culture punishes the “guilty” then they have their laugh and simply get away with it.

As for Plato’s Euthyphro dilemma, see the attached video Morality: splitting the horns of the Euthyphro dilemma.

The next section will consider morality as a Darwinian survival mechanism.

politician s

Jeremy L. England

Atheist Quotes / Atheism Quotes

True Freethinker now presents various famous atheist quotes, not so famous atheist quotes and infamous atheist quotes and, for good measure, a few quotes about atheists and atheism by non-atheists (aatheists?)

American Atheist‘s webmaster,

Atheists are NOT “secular humanists”, “freethinkers”, “rationalists” or “ethical culturalists”…Often, people who are Atheists find it useful to masquerade behind such labels.1

Vox Day,

the following pair of definitions have proven to be useful in distinguishing between the High Church atheist and the agnostic.

Agnostic: I don’t believe there is a God. Because I haven’t seen the evidence.
Atheist: There is no God. Because I’m an ***hole.2 [expletive removed]

Wired Magazine‘s Gary Wolf; who included himself in the following description:

we lax agnostics, we noncommittal nonbelievers, we vague deists who would be embarrassed to defend antique absurdities like the Virgin Birth or the notion that Mary rose into heaven without dying, or any other blatant myth.

Gary Wolf wrote:

At dinner parties or over drinks, I ask people to declare themselves. “Who here is an atheist?” I ask.Usually, the first response is silence, accompanied by glances all around in the hope that somebody else will speak first. Then, after a moment, somebody does, almost always a man, almost always with a defiant smile and a tone of enthusiasm. He says happily, “I am!”But it is the next comment that is telling. Somebody turns to him and says: “You would be.””Why?””Because you enjoy pissing people off.””Well, that’s true.”

This type of conversation takes place not in central Ohio, where I was born, or in Utah, where I was a teenager, but on the West Coast, among technical and scientific people, possibly the social group that is least likely among all Americans to be religious.3

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Ken Ammi,

Atheism is a consoling delusion for people who cannot handle the reality of God’s existence.

Evilbible.com
From History of Atheism:

The lack of public acceptance for a “lack of belief” definition of “atheism” is reflected in the fact that no reputable dictionary has a “lack of belief” definition for either “atheism” or “atheist”.
However, this has not kept a few morons from incorrectly claiming that various dictionary definitions have a “lack of belief” definition…I have posted some of the arguments these people have used, and I explained why why [sic] they are so damn stupid.

From Atheism, the Bible, Rape and EvilBible.com, part 4 of 6

What kind of lunatic would make a rape victim marry her attacker? Answer: God…it is clear that God doesn’t give a damn about the rape victim.

From Atheism, the Bible, Rape and EvilBible.com, part 3 of 6:

Clearly Moses and God approves of rape of virgins

From Atheism, the Bible, Rape and EvilBible.com, part 5 of 6:

God Assists Rape and Plunder

From Atheism, the Bible, Rape and EvilBible.com, part 2 of 6:

These sick bastards killed and raped an entire town

From Atheism, Ritual Human Sacrifice in the Bible, and EvilBible.com, part 1 of 5:

Abraham takes his own son up on a mountain and builds an altar upon which to burn him…If Abraham did that today he would be in jail serving a long sentence as someone’s prison-b***. [expletive censored]

From Atheism, Ritual Human Sacrifice in the Bible, and EvilBible.com, part 2 of 5:

These priests are guilty of theft and kidnapping…What do we call a scum-bag that threatens to kill your kids unless you pay a ransom? A kidnapper! If these priests were alive today they would be in prison with Abraham.

From Atheism, Ritual Human Sacrifice in the Bible, and EvilBible.com, part 4 of 5:

God Commands Burning Humans.

From Atheism, Ritual Human Sacrifice in the Bible, and EvilBible.com, part 5 of 5:

Burn Nonbelievers

From Atheism, EvilBible.com, “Theists Suck” and Christians are Hypocrites, part 1 of 6

[Christians’] willful ignorance of the Bible combined with their two faced idealism to preach it, has made us sick, hasn’t it?…We are all aware that the church is simply a business which employs tactics similar to that of tobacco industries in recruiting consumers.

From Atheism, EvilBible.com, “Theists Suck” and Christians are Hypocrites, part 3 of 6

Ever watch these Christians on television and notice how their bowed heads uniformly shake amen while some evangelist goes on and on in prayer for a ******* hour?…
Christians are not supposed to take their disputes before non-Christian courts or judges…Does this stop Christians from tying up the supreme court with law suits concerning school prayer, abortion, or numerous other absurdities? Hell no it doesn’t, and my taxes are paying the ******* bill for their hypocrisy! [expletives censored]

From Atheism, EvilBible.com, “Theists Suck” and Christians are Hypocrites, part 4 of 6

shoot down these idiots and bar them from getting away with their hypocrisy.

From Atheism, EvilBible.com, “Theists Suck” and Christians are Hypocrites, part 5 of 6

How many times have you heard some lame ass Christian say “the Old testament doesn’t matter, Jesus was the lamb and abolished it”? Don’t let them get away with this ****. [expletive removed]

From Atheism, EvilBible.com, “Theists Suck” and Christians are Hypocrites, part 6 of 6

A raped, unengaged virgin must marry her rapist and they can never divorce (Deuteronomy 22:28-29). What justice the “moral majority” advocates!

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Ken Ammi,

An atheist walk into a bar and the bartender ask, “How did you get here?”
The atheist responds, “I’m just here and that’s all!”

Dan Barker:

there are no action in and of themselves are always absolutely right or wrong. It depends on the context. You cannot name an action that is always, absolutely right or wrong, I can think of an exception in any case.4

And if he [God] wants to prove to him [sic] what a big daddy in the sky he is, if he wants to prove what a big macho man he is and send someone to me [sic] to hell for having the audacity to think for myself and challenge his moral actions then let him do it. I would rather suffer an eternity in hell, burning in flames with some dignity, than pretending to bow down and worship at the feet of this, this brutal blood thirsty dictator of the Bible.5

Dan Barker offering reasons for doing “good”:

1. “if you wish to be…a healthy person” (meaning mentally healthy).2. “if you wish to be labeled ‘ethical’ by other people.”3. “if you wish to be viewed by your society as ‘a good person.'”

4. “if that’s something you wish.” 6

Darwin has bequeathed what is good….abortion is a blessing.7

There is no moral interpreter in the cosmos, nothing cares and nobody cares…what happens to me or a piece of broccoli, it won’t [matter] the Sun is going to explode, we’re all gonna be gone. No one’s gonna care.8

Jesus was,

a moral monster.

the real drive behind the antiabortionists: misogyny. I don’t believe that any one of them cares a hoot for a fetus.9

I support a women’s right to choose an abortion…I think for most women an abortion is a blessing in her life, it is a wonderful thing. Obviously, there is a difference between a fetus that’s the size of a thumb that has, what, what would you put it in a little locket and hang it around your neck?10

From Dan Barker’s anti-theism, pro positive affirmation of God’s non-existence poster:

There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world.

Kyle Butt on Dan Barker-What “We All Know” about a Lie,

Putting Mr. Barker’s statements together in logical form: (1) he considers it moral to lie in order to ‘protect someone from harm;’ (2) he considers religion to be harmful; (3) then it must follow that Mr. Barker would lie in order to dissuade a person from believing in God or religion.

Read a review of the Kyle Butt vs. Dan Barker debate here.

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Ken Ammi explaining atheism’s cognitive dissonance:

It is ignorant and superstitious to believe that God made everything out of nothing.It is rational and scientific to believe that nothing made everything out of nothing.It is ignorant and superstitious to believe that God is eternal.It is rational and scientific to believe that matter is eternal.God is an effect and must have had a cause.Matter is the uncaused first cause.If God made everything, then who made God?

Matter made everything and nothing made matter.

Ex-atheist C. S. Lewis:

If you are a Christian you do not have to believe that all the other religions are simply wrong all through. If you are an atheist you have to believe that the main point in all the religions of the whole world is simply one huge mistake.If you are a Christian, you are free to think that all these religions, even the queerest ones, contain at least some hint of the truth.

When I was an atheist I had to try to persuade myself that most of the human race have always been wrong about the question that mattered to them most; when I became a Christian I was able to take a more liberal view.11

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African-American atheist rapper Greydon Square,

I do shows in front of senior citizen white people…

Niggers believe in God; black people don’t…A nigger blames white people for slavery, a black knows it was Africans who sold black people into slavery.12

Ken Ammi,

My view on the atheist movement? If you can’t join them, beat them.

Bill Maher,

A “purity ball” is like a prom for a dad and his daughter, where dad gets in a tuxedo and the daughter gets in a gown, and they go to this ball, and he puts a ring on her finger and feeds her wedding cake, and she pledges to stay a virgin until she gets married. And then dad has sex with her in the car. [laughter] [applause]…

[referring to t-shirt that he had made up] I’m not going to lie; these are the bull[expletive removed] ones we made up that are even funnier. [laughter] “World’s Greatest [expletive removed] tease!” [laughter] [applause]…”I’m With Horny!” [laughter] Oh, I love this one. [laughter]…”My Father Went to Third Base and All I Got was this Lousy T-Shirt.” [laughter] [applause] And my favorite.[laughter] [he holds up t-shirt which reads, “My (picture of ‘pussy’cat) Belongs to Daddy.” [laughter] [groans] [applause]…If you’re slipping a ring on your daughter’s finger and eating wedding cake, trust me, you’re plotting to [expletive removed] the babysitter. [laughter]

Ken Ammi,

Atheism discredits condemnation and condemnation discredits atheism.

Giles Fraser,

Philosophers of the caliber of Nietzsche made the effort to understand what animates genuine religious belief…These days, philosophical acumen has been replaced by cheap jokes about the sexuality of nuns.13

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G. K. Chesterton:

But the new rebel is a Sceptic, and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore he can never be really a revolutionist. And the fact that he doubts everything really gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind; and the modern revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces, but the doctrine by which he denounces it.Thus he writes one book complaining that imperial oppression insults the purity of women, and then he writes another book (about the sex problem) in which he insults it himself. He curses the Sultan because Christian girls lose their virginity, and then curses Mrs. Grundy because they keep it.As a politician, he will cry out that war is a waste of life, and then, as a philosopher, that all life is waste of time. A Russian pessimist will denounce a policeman for killing a peasant, and then prove by the highest philosophical principles that the peasant ought to have killed himself.A man denounces marriage as a lie, and then denounces aristocratic profligates for treating it as a lie. He calls a flag a bauble [mock scepter of office], and then blames the oppressors of Poland or Ireland because they take away that bauble.The man of this school goes first to a political meeting, where he complains that savages are treated as if they were beasts; then he takes his hat and umbrella and goes on to a scientific meeting, where he proves that they practically are beasts.In short, the modern revolutionist, being an infinite sceptic, is always engaged in undermining his own mines. In his book on politics he attacks men for trampling on morality; in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on men.

Therefore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything.

Randy Thornhill and Craig T. Palmer

evolutionary theory applies to rape, as it does to other areas of human affairs, on both logical and evidentiary grounds. There is no legitimate scientific reason not to apply evolutionary or ultimate hypotheses to rape…Human rape arises from men’s evolved machinery for obtaining a high number of mates in an environment where females choose mates.14

Joann Ellison Rodgers,

Rape or at least rape-like acts clearly exist in many species, giving additional weight to both rape’s “natural” roots and its “value” in our biological and psychological legacy_
Even rape, fetishes, bondage, and other so-called aberrant sexual behaviors are almost certainly biologically predisposed, if not adaptive, and may therefore be what biologists call ‘conserved’ traits, attributes or properties useful or essential to life across all cultures and genomes.15From Billions and Billions of Demons, Prof. Lewontin’s review of Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World. This entire, very sobering, article is posted and reviewed here.

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Richard Lewontin:

What seems absurd depends on one’s prejudice. Carl Sagan accepts, as I do, the duality of light, which is at the same time wave and particle, but he thinks that the consubstantiality of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost puts the mystery of the Holy Trinity “in deep trouble.” Two’s company, but three’s a crowd.16

Daniel Dennett,

We’re just the beginning of a new wave of explicit attempts to shake peoples’ faith.

Christopher Hitchens:

I didn’t expect, when I started off on my book tour, to be as lucky as I was and I, Jerry Falwell died my first week on the road, that was amazing.

Sam Harris, very enthusiastically and laughingly,

Yes, that was amazing luck!

David Limbaugh from, The Paradoxical Hatred of Christopher Hitchens:

Hitchens refused to back down from his excoriation of Falwell on the very day of his death, saying, “I don’t care whether his family’s feelings are hurt or not. But if they are, they can take comfort from the extraordinary piety and stupidity, and generally speaking, uniformity of the coverage of the man’s death.” Hitchens’ response to CNN’s Anderson Cooper’s question of whether he believed in heaven and whether ‘you think Jerry Falwell is in it.’ Hitchens said he did not believe in it, but “I think it’s a pity there isn’t a hell for him to go to.”

Christopher Hitchens:

I’ll take things you and Richard say on the human and natural sciences, not without wanting to check, but I’m often unable to but knowing that you are the sort of gentlemen who would have checked. If you say, “the bishop told me it so I believe it” you make a fool of yourself it seems to me, and one is entitled to say so.

Sam Harris poses the following question,

Is there any argument for faith, any challenge to your atheism that has given you pause, that has set you back on your heels where you felt you didn’t have a ready answer, etc?

Daniel Dennett responds,

Actually I can’t think of anything.

Daniel Dennett:

I think, what I would love to do is to invent a memorable catchphrase or term that would rise unbidden in their minds when they caught themselves doing it, and then they would think oh, this is one of those cosmic shifts that Dennett and Dawkins and Harris and Hitchens are talking about. Oh! right! and they think this is somehow illicit, just to create a little more awareness in them of what a strange thing it is that they’re doing.

Christopher Hitchens,

they’re all equally rotten, false, dishonest, corrupt, humourless and dangerous.

Responding to the question of whether “all faith claims are in some sense equivalent.”

Dinesh D’Souza, “Richard Dawkins Compares Me to Hitler,” AOL, July 7, 2008

I suspect that Dawkins has come up with this pathetic reductio ad Hitlerum in order to justify his cowardice in not debating me…Isn’t the real problem that Dawkins has used his zoologist’s credentials in order to wander into fields (physics, astronomy, history, philosophy, anthropology, theology) where his knowledge is embarrassingly limited? I suspect he’s worried that in a debate I will exposure his ignorance and make him an international object of ridicule. Why not prove me wrong, Richard? Come out from under your desk and take me up on my invitation to debate.

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Ken Ammi,

Atheism is the Valium of the people.

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Due to robo-spaming, I had to close the comment sections. However, you can comment on my Facebook page and/or on my Google+ page. You can also use the “Share / Save” button below this post.

Jack Drescher

Video and Article: What do Bill Cosby and Miley Cyrus have in common? Date rape!

Bill Cosby is facing a mounting barrage of accusations of rape and various forms of sexual abuse, harassment, etc. (do not be surprised if he has a “heat attack” soon).

Of note within the media and pop-occulture has been his statements within the standup routing called “Spanish Fly” the words of which are, in part:

When I was 13, man. Start talking about weird things. No, really. Standing on the corner: You know anything about Spanish Fly. What? Spanish Fly. It always happens when you’re 13, only when you’re 13 on up to when, like, you get married. Guys stand around talking about Spanish Fly … You know anything about Spanish Fly? No, tell me about it. Well, there’s this girl—Crazy Mary—you put some in her drink, man … ahhhhhh … yeah, Spanish … Oh, that’s really groovy man. Spanish Fly is groovy. Yeah boy. From then on, man, any time you see a girl: Wish you had some Spanish Fly boy. Go to a party, see five girls standing alone—boy, if I had a whole jug of Spanish Fly I’d light that corner up over there.

Around May of 2014 AD; Miley Cyrus performed in what has been termed a secret “G-A-Y” show (apparently a reference to a club).
Referring to a 23-year-old friend she said:

He’s straight but I said that for years too, and finally it gets easier. You know, everyone’s a little bit gay. Some of us just a little bit more than others. You know, it’s the truth. Everyone’s gay. All it takes is one cocktail. And if that doesn’t work, sprinkle something in their drink. That’s what I always do.

Now, did Bill Cosby and Miley Cyrus actually date rape anyone? Was Bill Cosby and Miley Cyrus just joking? These are not question was will answer.
However, the fact is that we have two very influential celebrities “joking” about and/or otherwise recommending date rape.

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